Limbaugh: Obama stoking racial antagonism

Anyone who has listened to Rush Limbaugh in the last six months for even a minute knows that he’s not real happy about John McCain’s candidacy. In fact, here’s a bit from a transcript of a Limbaugh program back during the primaries;

I want to hear you talk about your immigration record, Senator McCain.  I want to hear you talk about your record on free speech, meaningful, campaign finance reform.  I’d like to hear what you think we should do with the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.  The people of Florida need to hear this.

[…]

Talk about how proud you are of your service in the Senate, leading the Gang of 14, campaign finance reform, voting against two major tax cuts.  Those tax cuts would help millions of businesses and employees, spurt economic growth.  I would like to hear of your proud alliance with Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, Senator Lieberman on global warming, and others.  I’m a Republican primary voter.  I would like to hear some straight talk on those issues.  Will I?

Here’s a Howard Kurtz article on Limbaugh in the Washington Post back in February;

Rush Limbaugh has been relentless in his criticism of John McCain, prompting suggestions that he may have to soften his stance if the Arizona senator wins the nomination and faces off against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But if that happens, Limbaugh said in an interview over the weekend, he would rather see the Democrats win the White House.

“If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit . . . rather than a Republican causing the debacle,” he said. “And I would prefer not to have conservative Republicans in the Congress paralyzed by having to support, out of party loyalty, a Republican president who is not conservative.”

Now, suddenly, the Obama campaign wants to tie Limbaugh’s remarks from more than a decade ago to John McCain and Limbaugh has disputed the link in a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled “Obama is stoking racial antagonism“;

Mr. Obama’s campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Here’s the relevant part of the Spanish-language television commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:

“They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with . . . the intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much.”

Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: “. . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans” and “You shut your mouth or you get out!”

Here’s the “Dos Caras” (Two Faces) ad in Spanish

Rush explains the context;

The first sound bite was extracted from a 1993 humorous monologue poking fun at the arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Here’s the context:

“If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine ’cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”

My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers.

He continues on the second point;

I was mocking the Mexican government’s double standard — i.e., urging open borders in this country while imposing draconian immigration requirements within its own borders. Thus, I took the restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and appropriated them as my own suggestions for a new immigration law.

Here’s the context for that sound bite: “And another thing: You don’t have the right to protest. You’re allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. You’re a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you’re going to jail.”

At the time, I made abundantly clear that this was a parody on the Mexican government’s hypocrisy and nobody took it otherwise.

Of course, for the people who saw the ad, many won’t get the explanation…not alot of people who watch Telemundo also read the Wall Street Journal (I’m the only one I know that does, well, except Kate). However even a whiff of this deception would come as no surprise to Hispanics, many mistrust Obama for exactly the same reasons that 97% of Blacks support Obama.

You know that the Obama operatives had to pour through hours of Limbaugh tapes and transcripts to come up with these two weak examples because Rush isn’t a racist…which probably surprised the Obama campaigners listening for the first time.

Limbaugh points out in his piece that no one in the media is particularly interested in Obama’s relationship to terrorists, criminals and racists, so does anyone really think they’ll call Obama on this flight of fancy? Another job for bloggers, I suppose.

Category: Politics