Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is under fire for remarks he made to reporters about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008:
Republicans called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign his leadership post over remarks he made in 2008 about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, adding to the Nevada Democrat’s political troubles.
Mr. Reid, who supported Mr. Obama’s candidacy, said in private remarks during the campaign that the country was ready for a “light-skinned” African-American president with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” The remarks are recounted in a new book, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.”
A spokesman for Mr. Reid said the senator wouldn’t resign his leadership post. “He has no intention of stepping down,” Jim Manley said. “Unlike others who advocate moving our nation backwards and viewing this moment for political gain, he’s working…to move our country forward.”
The controversy comes at a critical moment for Mr. Reid, who is facing an uphill battle for re-election this year and is trying to shepherd Mr. Obama’s health-care overhaul through the Senate.
I’m not going to waste your time with rants about the blatant double standards of the media, Congressional Democrats or even Al Sharpton… Any sane person instinctively understands that Senator Reid’s remarks were foolish and racially insensitive, if not out right racist.
The sad reality is that, as the Washington Times points out many of the people now trying to excuse or defend Sen Reid are the same people who were calling for the Senate Majority Leader Trett Lott’s resigantion:
But several Democrats — including Mrs. Feinstein — did in fact target Mr. Lott after his remarks. “This statement casts a dark shadow over Sen. Lott’s ability to be a credible party leader,” she said in 2002, according to an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin news story.
“I can tell you if a Democratic leader said such a thing, they would not be allowed to keep their position,” Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, said of Mr. Lott in 2002.
Sen. John Kerry also called on Mr. Lott to resign, saying “I simply do not believe the country can today afford to have someone who has made these statements again and again be the leader of the United States Senate,” according to a Boston Globe article.
Bottom line our elected representatives should be held to highest standard of conduct, not the lowest. Harry Reid has shown himself to be a racially insensitive idiot and he should step down… Period.