After months of applauding and enabling the thinly (and not so thinly) veiled racist attacks against the President, the Republican Party has come out swinging against the suggestion racism drives a good portion of their base. Here's RNC Chairman Michael Steele, demanding that Obama repudiate Jimmy Carter:
Characterizing Americans’ disapproval of President Obama’s policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them. Playing the race card shows that Democrats are willing to deal from the bottom of the deck. Our political system has no place for this type of rhetoric.
But what did Carter actually say?
I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. That he's African-American.
If Michael Steele wants to argue that the birther, Kenyan, Muslim, un-American, monkey, witchdoctor attacks against the President, made by the elected and unelected arms of the Republican Party, have anything to do with policy disagreements then let him try make that laughable case. But he can take his outrage and his straw man and shove it.