Proof Republicans Are Racist Towards President Obama

Proof positive that Republicans are racist when it comes to their treatment of President Obama, the first African-American president in history.

There is no doubt that many Republicans are racist when it comes to President Obama.

The president has been forced to endure racism, hatred and malicious lies and rumors like no other American president.

As Timothy Egan of The New York Times reported in an Op/Ed piece,

From the day he took office, his legitimacy has been challenged, his American birth has been suspect, and he’s been personally insulted, lectured, yelled at and disrespected in public, by public figures, in a way that few if any American presidents have ever faced.

A conservative friend asked me the other day why liberals are always playing the race card when it comes to Obama. And let’s be honest, we do question whether or not racism plays a part in the unprecedented hatred directed towards Obama.

The problem is that as soon as we do, we get accused of being THE RACISTS ourselves, as you can see in the example from my friend, below:

WHY is it that if those who support President Obama automatically go to “race” when they disagree with someone who does not support the political leanings of this President? It seems to me that those who do that are more prejudiced than the ones they accuse. Think about it. Why is it that their reasoning automatically takes them to “race” . . . as if there can not be ANY other possible reason to differ. It’s amazing to me that so many, including Mindy, will use that race card on people who so strongly support people like Dr. Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Mia Love, and a HUGE list I could go on with. Kind of negates that “race” issue to me. Maybe their thought process should continue on a bit farther.

With that in mind, we have collected several examples of flagrant displays of racism from leading Republicans, examples from state level officials, and some broader examples such as the birther movement.

Newt Gingrich

Back in September 2010 Newt Gingrich told National Review that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, asking:

What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh has made numerous racially offensive remarks about the President to include stating that Obama is “able to turn on that Negro dialect whenever he wants to.” Referring to a 2007 video of Obama talking about race relations, Limbaugh also stated:

And we got the trumped up black accent like down in Selma. And we’re gonna go back and relive all that. Hillary, “I ain’t no ways tired.” Gonna go back and relive all of it. That southern-fried accent that Obama put on before the black ministers, was he raised in the southern part of Hawaii? Where did he pick that accent up? I’ve been to Hawaii. I’ve never heard that accent over there. I’ve been to Hawaii a lot, in fact. His accent got so strong, I half expected him to tell the audience that he wasn’t no ways tired when he was going on and on about this. But I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been born somewhere close to Selma.

Rick Santorum

In a 2011 interview with CNS News, Rick Santorum brought race into Obama’s view on abortion, stating:

The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person — human life is not a person, then — I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’

Tom Coburn

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) claimed that Obama has stamped his alleged dependency on government because “it worked so well for him” that “as an African-American male… he got tremendous benefit” from entitlement programs.

His intent isn’t to destroy. It’s to create dependency because it worked so well for him. I don’t say that critically. Look at people for what they are. Don’t assume ulterior motives. I don’t think he doesn’t love our country. I think he does.

“As an African American male, coming through the progress of everything he experienced, he got tremendous benefit through a lot of these programs. So he believes in them.

Sarah Palin

Notorious for making racist comments about Obama, we decided to highlight one our favorites – the time she was caught spewing racist nonsense about Benghazi on a Facebook note and its linked Twitter account referring to “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick”.

As CNN’s Roland Martin noted at the time:

“Shucking and jiving” have long been words used as a negative assessment of African Americans, along the lines of a “foot shufflin’ Negro.” In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase used in reference to anyone white.

Obama's Shuck and Jive Ends With Benghazi Lies http://t.co/srKGX5Va

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 24, 2012

Group Attacks, Part I

There are also examples of times that more than one person came together to attack Obama, such as the time that Sarah Palin, Senator Ted Cruz, and Senator Mike Lee joined a couple hundred protestors in Washington, DC to protest President Obama’s closing down the WWII Memorial (while pretending they had nothing to do with the government shutdown). These protestors then marched to the White House, where they carried a Confederate flag and demanded “the President leave town, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to come out with his hands up.”

Something is going down at the White House today… pic.twitter.com/ThxvQBJa9Y

— Aaron Takahashi (@TakaHashtag) October 13, 2013

As we reported at the time, “Did no one realize that carrying a Confederate flag in front of the White House, where our first African-American family now resides, was an absolutely disgusting display of racism? The Confederate flag – which represents a war that killed 600,000 Americans over the right to enslave other human beings?”

Group Attacks, Part II – State Officials

Examples of racism directed at Obama flourished during campaign cycles and as Slate reported in 2012,

“[V]ery often you’ll have local, state, and sometimes national officials exposed for explicit racism. It seems like it has become a monthly occurrence that an elected Republican either forwards some horrible racist chain email about President Obama or makes some horrible racist off-the-cuff remark. (For a few examples of this from the past year, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

In a stunning example, Jennifer Olsen, chairwoman of the Yellowstone County Republicans and a prominent tea party organizer in Montana, published the following photo on her Facebook page in February of 2013 according to MontanaFesto.

Group Attacks, Part III – Broader Attacks

Claims of Sealed Obama Records Proven False

No American president has endured the kinds of malicious and false rumors about his past as has President Obama and as part of an ongoing public service commitment by this website, we present our series of articles debunking right-wing lies taking on myths such as those claiming that Obama’s thesis paper is sealed, college records are sealed from Occidental College Columbia and Harvard, his Selective Service Registration is sealed, Obama’s medical records are sealed, his state senate records are sealed, and that his law practice records are sealed.

Birthers

The New York Times put it best in a recent article, writing:

The biggest slap at the president was the smear about his birth. It’s insulting and humiliating that Obama — alone among presidents — has been forced to release his long-form birth record to satisfy a clutch of fact-deniers. Leading the attack on the president’s very citizenship is the professional vulgarian Donald Trump, who gets away with the kind of preposterous, race-based comments granted few black public figures.

Trump’s displays of idiocy on Fox News are a staple of that network. I wait for the day when something Trump says that is both stupid and incendiary is held up as representative of all white people — and he’s asked to apologize for his race.

BONUS: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Speaks Out Against Republican Racism

In October 2012, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson publicly stated that the Republican Party is “full of racists” who only want President Obama out of office because of “the color of his skin.”

In an interview with Ed Schultz, Wilkerson stated:

Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander in chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.