Issue of race haunts U.S. politics as GOP pushes Harry Reid to step down
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Republicans this morning poured gasoline on the political firestorm surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, calling for the beleaguered Nevada lawmaker to step down over racially insensitive remarks.
“Trent Lott resigned and Harry Reid should resign,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said this morning. Cornyn is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the group that will help coordinate and fund this year’s Senate elections when Republicans try to revive the party’s standing in that chamber.
Cornyn’s remarks follow a weekend of Republicans taking to the airways to condemn Reid for what he acknowledges was a poor choice of words.
In their book “Game Change,” Time magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann referred to Reid, saying he was impressed “by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ’light-skinned’ African American ’with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately.”
Reid has apologized for the remark. President Obama, who needs Reid’s help to push healthcare overhaul through its last innings, has accepted the apology and has said it is time to move on. Democrats, white and black, have rushed to Reid’s defense as well.
But Republicans are not about to let the issue go and often cite what they see as a double standard in this case when compared to former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican.
Lott praised the 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond — then a Democrat running to protect states’ rights to pass laws defending racial segregation. Lott spoke during a 100th-birthday tribute to Thurmond, who had become a GOP senator. Lott eventually apologized but resigned his leadership post.
While Obama has tried to steer clear of race-related controversy, Reid is hardly the first to be stung by the issue. Even allies and friends have been unable to resist commenting on Obama’s historic achievement – with often-embarrassing results.
Then-Sen. Joe Biden, during the presidential campaign, was quoted as describing Obama: ‘I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,’ Biden said. ‘I mean, that’s a storybook, man.’
Biden is now vice president, picked by Obama.
Also during the campaign, former President Bill Clinton tried to dismiss Obama’s standing in the then-pivotal South Carolina primary by arguing that the state had been carried by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, implying that Obama’s popularity was limited to his own racial group.
In ‘Game Change,’ the authors maintained that Clinton griped to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy that the political pack was backing Obama because of race. “The only reason you are endorsing him is because he’s black. Let’s just be clear.”
Clinton has apologized and has become an adviser to Obama, meeting just last week in the White House with the president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on whose behalf the former president campaigned, is now secretary of State.
Jesse Jackson, the famous civil rights leader, became mired at one point in race-related controversy in connection with Obama.
In an unguarded moment caught on camera during a break in an interview on Fox News, Jackson was heard whispering to a fellow panelist, ‘See ... he’s talking down to black people.’ Jackson also seemed to be making a cutting motion to emphasize his comment that Obama should lose a part of his anatomy.
-- Michael Muskal
