Liberals have grown increasingly angry at Republican “gerrymandering” as a cause for today’s “crazy” conservative House, that Republicans represent overwhelmingly anti-Obama districts and are in no danger of losing. They often completely ignore that many minority Democrats represent overwhelmingly pro-Obama districts and are in no danger of losing. (In response to Voting Rights Act-caused racial gerrymandering, we have silly-looking districts like Mel Watt’s in North Carolina. See PJ Media for more.)
In Tuesday’s USA Today, black columnist DeWayne Wickham -- a former reporter for U.S. News & World Report magazine -- took this willful blindness to new heights, and bizarrely made it sound like a white conspiracy that Republican districts are so white the House GOP “looks like a Klan klavern”:
Taylor Branch
On Tuesday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd invited liberal historian Taylor Branch to blast modern-day conservatism as nothing more than racism in disguise: "You talked about how George Wallace decided to change his language right after – when the word segregation no longer had a – so he changed his language and it all became about big government." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In response, Branch ranted: "He attacked big government, he called 'pointy-headed bureaucrats' and 'tyrannical judges' and 'tax and spend legislators.' He basically invented a lot of the modern vocabulary of politics, taking racial animosity and unease and making – and transmuting it into a distrust of government. And that's – you know, that's what we're doing now."
On Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith painted a glowing portrait of the Clinton administration while previewing a new book on the former president: "During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the nation prospered, he worked to broker peace in the Middle East and in the Balkans, championed welfare reform, and signed the NAFTA free trade agreement."
The book, entitled The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President was written by Clinton friend and historian Taylor Branch, who recorded a series of 79 conversations with the president while in office.
After listing Clinton’s supposed accomplishments, Smith lamented: "But his presidency was marred by numerous investigations, a lawsuit brought by Paula Jones charging sexual harassment, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal." Smith later asked Branch about the scandals: "What was he [Clinton] like during that time?" Branch responded sympathetically: "He talked about it seldom and painfully....He said ‘I cracked’....A little later he said he felt sorry for himself, that he thought he had beaten down all the scandals and then they would keep reviving and coming back....he just said this ‘it’s never going to stop.’" Smith repeated: "Never going to stop."