Innis v. Rangel

Congressman Charlie Rangel has no qualms about concocting libelous falsehoods about people he knows nothing about. He recently undertook to smear the Tea Party and anyone else associated with political conservatives. If anyone wants to know why our politics is so fractious and polarized all one need do is read the sorts of things people like Rangel say about those with whom he disagrees:

[The Tea Party] is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked. It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say enough is enough. ‘I don’t want to see it and I am not a part of it.’ What the hell! If you have to bomb little kids and send dogs out against human beings, give me a break.

If a white congressman said something comparable about a black organization he'd be roundly condemned and censured, but Rangel has already been censured by the House for corruption so, perhaps that, plus the fact that he's black and 83 years old and perhaps a little dottery, disinclines people from judging him too harshly.

It may be unkind to suggest that Charlie is non compos mentis, but it's probably the kindest explanation for not only what he said above but also for this:

[House Republicans] have done more damage to American competitiveness than al Qaeda ever could. What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.

Anyone who would make such a claim before a public audience is either suffering from dementia, incredibly ignorant, or dishonest.

Anyway, a Tea Party strategist and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality named Niger Innis delivered a deft riposte to the addlepated Mr. Rangel. The Daily Caller reports:

"It is not surprising that lazy, shiftless politicians who have an abysmal record for their community would want to diffuse the issue of what they are doing for their communities by dropping the race card,” Innis, an African American and the chief strategist for TheTeaParty.net, told The Daily Caller in an interview.

According to Innis, Rangel comparing the tea party to segregationists represents the same strategy white Southern Democrats in the South used prior to the civil rights era — back then obscuring the issues by playing what he called the “nigger card.” Rangel is part of a “long tradition of Democrat, racist demagogues” who run to race when they are not able to deliver for their constituents.

“What Charlie Rangel should be talking about is the level of performance of kids in the public schools in his district, what he should be talking about are the lack of jobs and the record high unemployment rate in his district and among black Americans all across his country,” Innis explained.

“What he should be talking about is the black-on-black genocide that is taking place in the urban center,” he added. “But unfortunately leaders like Charlie Rangel and the leaders that have run Detroit for the last 50 years have nothing but a record of failure and want to change the issue.”

It amazes me how much vitriol is directed by the left at the folks who loosely make up what's called the Tea Party. These people stand primarily for smaller, constitutional government, less spending, and more growth. Despite these modest aspirations, the left, including people like Mr. Rangel, disparage them as if they were neo-Nazis.

Their insulting, uncivil rhetoric does nothing to bring people together. All it does is erect walls between groups, divide them along ideological lines, and guarantee that political gridlock will persist.