TW: Bobby Rush is playing with yesterday's playbook. His brand of racial politics seems as out of place as those Republicans re-using their own tired recipes. As Economist notes, the last thing anyone, African-American or otherwise, should want is a scandal tainted, desperate and ultimately somewhat sad politico like Roland Burris representing them as a symbol in the Senate. Yet folks like Rush keep pressing in their divisive way for just that.
From the Economist:
"BOBBY RUSH, the Black Panther-turned-Chicago congressman, had condemned Governor Rod Blagojevich as fiercely as anyone in Illinois. Then Mr Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris—the most desperate-for-work man we've seen since Jack Lemmon's character in Glengarry Glen Ross—to Barack Obama's Senate seat. Voila! In a week, Mr Rush has become the most shameless race-baiting pol in America. A day-by-day guide:
•"I would ask you the not hang or lynch the appointee... I don't think that anyone, any U.S. Senator who is sitting right now would want to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate." (December 30)
• "I'm talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm talking about George Wallace, Bull Connor and I'm sure that the US Senate don't want to see themselves placed in the same position." (December 31)
• "[The Senate is] the last bastion of plantation politics."
(January 4)
The irony, according to black political columnist Clarence Page and Harry Reid, in his Meet the Press Sunday interview: if Mr Rush had his way, Barack Obama would have never been in the Senate. Bitter about a re-election campaign he fought with Mr Obama in 2000, Mr Rush dissed his old opponent in 2004 and endorsed rival, white Senate candidate Blair Hull, whose memorable achievements were making millions of dollars and beating his wife.
So... by his own standards, is Bobby Rush a modern Orval Faubus or a real-life Simon Legree? Probably the latter. After all, what's the good for black America of having the only black senator be a fool selected in a corrupt bargain?"
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/01/dialacliche_bobby_rush_edition.cfm
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