Romney Unleashes Sununu, Racial Flame-thrower

Not once has Romney publicly admonished Sununu, indicating tacit approval and concurrence.

[The View From Washington]
 
Retired four-star general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former National Security Advisor, former Secretary of State and current Republican Colin Powell has endorsed President Obama.

“I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on,” Powell said. “I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012.” 

Speaking on the domestic agenda Powell said

“When he took over, the country was in very, very difficult straits,” Powell added, noting the nation was close to a depression, “we were in real trouble.”

Reflecting on Gov. Romney’s foreign policy initiatives Powell opined, “I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we’d be getting with respect to foreign policy,” and he called Romney’s foreign policy “a moving target.”

In response to Gen. Powell’s endorsement, John Sununu, former New Hampshire Governor and top adviser to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said: “I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States. I applaud Colin for standing with him.”

If Sununu’s race-baiting of Powell’s endorsement is accurate, how does Sununu explain the fact that most polls show Romney losing his home state of Massachusetts where White people represent 84.1% of the population and African Americans make up only 7.8%? 

How does Sununu explain the fact that most polls predict that Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan (R-WI) will be unable to deliver his own home state to the Republican ticket?  In Wisconsin, Whites make up 88.4% of the population and African Americans make up only 6.5%.  Sununu can’t race-bait polls showing Romney losing his birth state of Michigan — where his father was Governor– where Whites make up 80.2 % of the population and African Americans make up 14.3%.

Sununu cannot race-bait the fact that Utah’s largest newspaper slammed their Mormon brother Mitt Romney and endorsed President Obama.  The Salt Lake Tribune called him “the party’s shape-shifting nominee.”  The editorial board hoped that “Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem-solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago,” but noted that instead “we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb.” 

Sununu cannot even use race to explain the polls showing Romney losing in Sununu’s home state of New Hampshire where Whites make up 94.6% of the population and African Americans 1.3%.

Sununu’s not-so-veiled bigotry speaks volumes about him as well as those he supports.  Sununu has called the president “foreign;” stated that the president does not know “how to be American”; called him “lazy” and “classless.”  It’s Sununu who has had the unmitigated gal to accuse the president of dividing the country along racial lines. Not once has the man that Sununu is advising, Mitt Romney, come out and publicly admonished him.  His silence can only indicate tacit approval and concurrence.

Sununu’s not alone.  Recently, Republican and Tea Party darling Sarah Palin has jumped back into the mix. On her Facebook page she posted, “Obama’s Shuck and Jive Ends With Benghazi Lies” and later tweeted, “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.” 

Shuckin’ and Jivin’ is a slang term for the behavior of joking and acting facetiously, historically attributed to African slaves in the American South. Slaves lying and teasing during corn-shucking season became a part of the protective and evasive behavior normally adopted toward white people.  It was then New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo in 2008 who first used this term in reference to Senator Obama in his race against Hilary Clinton.

And Donald Trump is now calling for President Obama to release his Columbia and Harvard University records. “If Barack Obama opens up and gives his college records and applications and if he gives his passport applications and records, I will give to a charity of his choice,” Trump said, “a check, immediately, for $5 million. The check will be given within one hour after he releases all of the records so stated.”

This all comes down to President Obama disrupting Sununu’s, Trump’s, Romney’s and others’ sense of White privilege. As Lauren Burke from Politic365 stated, Obama with a Kenyan father and White single mother is not supposed to be where he is today. He defies the stereotype. 

He has what all of Donald Trump’s millions and sense of privilege cannot acquire –a seat at the desk in the Oval Office. Frederick Douglass said it best: “If he comes in ignorance, rags and wretchedness he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome; but if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence.”

Sununu’s not-so-veiled bigotry speaks volumes.


Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with  WilmerLeon,” and a Teaching Associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C.  Go to [email protected],  www.wilmerleon.com , email: [email protected].  orwww.twitter.com/drwleon

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