Daily Dolt: Bobby Rush
A day after making racially charged remarks warning critics of Roland Burris’s appointment to the U.S. Senate to “not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate” disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush said today that senators “don’t want to see themselves in the same position” as George Wallace, Bull Connor and others who promoted segregation in the Civil Rights era.
Appearing this morning on “The Early Show” on CBS, Rush also said those attacking Blagojevich, who faces criminal charges that include trying to sell the vacant U.S. Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama should take it easy.
“I think what needs … to happen now is that all these folks who are opposed to Gov. Blagojevich, they need to take a chill pill,” Rush said. “We’re still a nation of laws and I believe that Roland Burris and Gov. Blagojevich, they’re on solid constitutional grounds in terms of … him being selected. I think the U.S. Senate will have to accept him.”
Rush underscored the role of racial politics during Blagojevich’s controversial appointment yesterday of Burris, the state’s first African-American elected official and a former state attorney general, to the seat left vacant by Obama, who was the U.S. Senate’s lone black member.
“I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer,” Rush said Tuesday in promising to lobby congressional leaders, including U.S. Senate Democratic leaders who have vowed not to seat Burris or anyone appointed by the embattled two-term Democratic governor.
Despite Rush’s statements, Obama, the first African-American to be elected president, said he sides with U.S. Senate Democratic leaders in wanting the appointment of Burris or anyone else chosen by Blagojevich to be rejected.
Burris, appearing this morning on WGN-TV, defended Rush’s comments and denied the South Side congressman — whom Burris invited to yesterday’s U.S. Senate announcement–was playing racial politics.
Rush, Burris said, was just relating “facts and not playing the race card and not being emotional about it.”
As for Rush, in his interview this morning, he harkened to the days of segregation and the civil rights battles in Little Rock, Ark., and in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s in warning the U.S. Senate Democratic majority shouldn’t try to block Burris.
“You know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where schoolchildren — where you have officials standing in the doorway of schoolchildren,” Rush said. “You know, I’m talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Ark. I’m talking about George Wallace, Bull Connor and I’m sure that the U.S. Senate don’t want to see themselves placed in the same position.”
It was pretty impossible to cut that down–Pearson’s writing was pretty much perfect making every paragraph important to the point.
I believe this analogy leads to one concluding Rod Blagojevich is Thurgood Marshall. Bobby should be doing stand up comedy.
December 31st, 2008 at
So much for playing the card, he played the whole deck…
When I was watching the press conference my jaw just about hit the floor.
The destruction being brought forth by this governor is truly mind blowing.