The Right on Powell’s Endorsement: Better Racist Than Wrong
One of the more fascinating, and self-defeating, characteristics of the modern conservative movement is the inability to admit or even recognize their own failure. When presented with a straightforward statement, instead of applying Occam’s Razor and concluding the simplest explanation is the best, they put their blinders on and proceed to dig up patently absurd excuses that will, if you look at them in the right light at a certain angle, exonerate them from being totally wrong.
Gen. Colin Powell used to be on their team. A lifelong Republican, he was the black man conservatives could point to when they were accused of looking like Baskin Robbins in the early years (“One Flavor: Vanilla”). While conservatives didn’t have much use for Powell’s willingness to challenge Bush on a number of issues, his appearance before the U.N. with his vial of white powder and sketchy diagrams was all they needed to add that dash of legitimacy to an otherwise flimsy excuse to go to war. When Powell realized that his U.N. shark-jumping routine had cost him his credibility, he cut his losses, and conservatives bid him good riddance as respectfully as they could, given his national popularity among independents and moderates. They replaced him with Condi Rice in an attempt to maintain that illusion of diversity, but it was like Van Halen replacing Sammy Hagar with Gary Cherone.
For a time, though, conservatives were cool with Powell. Even though he put out a book highlighting some of the administration’s missteps in 2006, Powell never outright trashed his former Commander in Chief. This kept him in good standing on the right…until last week.
It all started on Wednesday with this:
Hip-Hop-Dancing Colin Powell Fuels Speculation He’ll Endorse Obama [elections.foxnews.com]
While I had been convinced all along that Powell was going to endorse Nathan Lane for president because he once sang “Y.M.C.A.” while dressed as the construction worker from the Village People, FOX’s reasoning is pretty sound. After all, black people are totally monolithic in their behavior, and once you’re seen gettin’ jiggy in public, well…..DUH! Of course it means he’s voting for the black guy!
But once he followed through with his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press this weekend, Colin Powell stepped into the path of the right’s flying monkey brigade and was immediately bombarded with poo.
Upper-Class Twit of the Year George Will [firedoglake.com]: “If we had the tools to measure we’d find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he’s black for every one he loses because he’s black because so much of this country is so eager, a, to feel good about itself by doing this, but more than that to put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric.”
Rush Limbaugh [www.politico.com]: “Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race. OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Pat Buchanan [crooksandliars.com]: “All right, we gotta ask a question. Look would Colin Powell be endorsing Obama if he were a white liberal Democrat…”
Further down the conservative food chain we have the rightwing blog RedState [www.redstate.com]: “Affirmative Action At The Highest Level: Unqualified Applicants Get Jobs Due Solely To Their Race”
And scraping the bottom of the barrel, you can go to Free Republic [www.freerepublic.com] and wade through the comments. Just be sure to leave your boots outside before you come back in here.
The one thing you’ll find in common at every level of conservative punditry is that at no time do any of them consider that Powell, a man who many of them respected (at least nominally), made his decision based on the merits of the two candidates. If Obama represented the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson wing of political rhetoric, Obama would’ve never made it past Super Tuesday. The idea that Colin Powell is incapable of looking past race never enters their heads. Powell didn’t endorse Obama because of the color of his skin, but because Obama is qualified to be president and has demonstrated better character and better judgment than John McCain.
But to admit that, conservatives would have to admit that their entire argument against Obama is wrong. So they de-legitimize Powell and tell their base to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore this development, because to them, it’s all about the blackness. And as any of them will tell you, it’s better to be thought of as racist than wrong.
– Michael Turner
