{"id":748,"date":"2003-10-14T14:27:24","date_gmt":"2003-10-14T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/748.html"},"modified":"2003-10-14T14:27:24","modified_gmt":"2003-10-14T19:27:24","slug":"the-compassionate-conservative-partys-latest-example-of-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-compassionate-conservative-partys-latest-example-of-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"The compassionate conservative party’s latest example of bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know the Republican Party has been trying the last few years, at least on the surface, to appear more accepting and tolerant of minorities. I just don’t think it’s going well.<\/p>\n

In the last few months, we’ve seen Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), admitting to having “segregationist feelings” against African Americans<\/a>, and then blaming proximity to a Muslim charity for the breakup of his marriage<\/a>. We’ve also witnessed Sen. Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum (R-Pa.) calling for criminal prosecution of gays and lesbians<\/a>, Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) comparing African Americans to drug addicts<\/a>, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) saying America would have been better off with a segregationist president in 1948, and Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.) insulting Muslims everywhere<\/a> by saying, “If I see someone comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over.”<\/p>\n

Not exactly a great track record. And these are just the publicized examples that I’ve heard about within the last year.<\/p>\n

Today I saw that Rep. Max Burns (R-Ga.) was gracious enough to apologize after one of his supporters made an anti-Semitic remark<\/a> at a recent fundraising event for the congressman’s re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Burns shared a stage with a supporter named Jackie Sommers who called Tony Center, Burns’ likely Democratic opponent next year, “that Jew boy down in Savannah.”<\/p>\n

Part of me knows that I can’t blame Burns entirely for the offensively stupid remark. Chances are, Burns had no idea what that jackass was going to say at his fundraiser.<\/p>\n

I can, however, blame Burns for the delay in his apology. What he should have done was denounce the comment immediately, telling his supporters that he won’t tolerate any form of bigotry. That didn’t happen. In fact, three weeks passed between the incident and today’s calls to Jewish leaders in Georgia to apologize.
\n
\nThree weeks<\/i>? If Burns were sincere about his regret, he wouldn’t have waited until the controversy started running in the local media to apologize.<\/p>\n

Burns now claims that he privately confronted Sommers about the anti-Semitic comment. How convenient. One of his supporters attacks a Democratic rival because of his religious faith, Burns claims to have “privately” done something about it, and he waits three weeks to apologize to the local Jewish community.<\/p>\n

I think the GOP’s new-and-improved respect for minorities has a long way to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know the Republican Party has been trying the last few years, at least on the surface, to appear more accepting and tolerant of minorities. I just don’t think it’s going well. In the last few months, we’ve seen Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), admitting to having “segregationist feelings” against African Americans, and then blaming proximity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}