Lonegan Takes The Offensive

“I have a handicap, you know.   I’m a white guy, running in the State of New Jersey.  That’s my handicap. “

“I took down an inappropriate, silly tweet after 20 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes.  5 months later, Anti-Semitic, hate filled videos are still posted on Cory Booker’s website. Where’s the race card now? Where’s the media now? “Where’s the liberal left now in defending us against this kind of hate filled Anti-Semitism?”

~Steve Lonegan

Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, the front runner in the August 13 Republican primary for the nomination to replace the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg,  held a press conference in Kinnelon yesterday afternoon to address the reaction to the tweet(pictured to the right) posted by his campaign on Thursday night during the Democratic Senate Debate.

Lonegan billed the event as a “press conference on political correctness” but the tweet and his opponents “pulling the race card” was the topic.  In classic Lonegan fashion, the candidate confronted the problem and flipped the criticism back on his opponents.  In this case, his opponents being Booker, who is expected to win the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, the “liberal media” and Dr. Alieta Eck, his opponent for the Republican nomination.

Lonegan said the tweet, which was removed quickly, was posted by a young staffer who remains employed by the campaign. “He made a mistake. I’m not going to ruin his career by firing him.  I don’t do that. I will help him learn from it,” Lonegan said.

“Racism, racism, racism. They can’t wait to play the racist card,” Lonegan said of the Booker campaign and the media, “They couldn’t wait for the opportunity, any opportunity at all, a silly map, which is meaningless, sent out by some kid in a campaign, that had no intent other than to ah, whatever the intent was, I don’t even know what the intent was. But they can’t wait to pull the race card. Cause that’s how they play politics.

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Guess who’s coming to dinner

Over at NJ.com Star Ledger columnist John Farmer tells a tale of a dinner party he attended where he asked his fellow Caucasian guests (and hosts presumably) if they believe President Obama was born outside of the United States and if they believe he is a Muslim.  Most of the guest at the party that took place in a “pretty typical” “slightly upper-middle class neighborhood” admitted to believing that Obama is a foreign born Muslim, so said Farmer in the piece, After nearly four years of Barack Obama, is white America still uneasy with a black man in the White House?  Most of the commenters at NJ.com think the column is fiction.

How could Obama even have become president if white America was uneasy with a black man in the White House?

After four years, more Americans of all races are uneasy with that particular black man in the White House!    Herman Cain or Allen West would not make me uneasy.  Condoleeza Rice wouldn’t make me uneasy.  Colin Powell’s uneasiness makes me uneasy, not his skin color.

Farmer’s column is likely the an early indication of how the race card will be played by the left stream media in conjunction with the Obama campaign over the next four + plus months.

What will happen is “white guilt” isn’t working according to polling data come October?  What will the lefties do if Mitt Romney chooses a black running mate?

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Star Ledger Editor Tom Moran Calls Conservatives Racist

The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran is back to his old tricks of using the race card while attempting to advance his political agenda.

In early 2010, shortly after Governor Chris Christie took office, Moran tried to derail the Christie administration by teaming up with Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver to call Christie and his team “…white men, most of them political neophytes…” who never rode a bus and couldn’t understand how their deeply their economic policies were impacting “working poor families.” 

Moran did that before he realized that Christie is a “force of nature who could probably make a dog sing if he put his mind to it.”

In a column posted on Tuesday that defends the President’s constitutional pronouncements about the Supreme Court’s right to overturn ObamaCare Moran employed Jeanane Garofalo’s tactic of accusing Obama’s critics of being racist.

Because Moran is smarter and prettier, his accusation is sublter than Garofalo’s crude remarks, yet it is no less offensive:

Obama went on to make an important point: That if the court overrules the health care law, it will be practicing judicial activism. Conservatives have been complaining about judicial activism since the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and the heat rose considerably after Roe v. Wade.

Maybe fellow Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine can explain the difference between judicial activistism and constructionism to Moran.

Activistism is when a Court finds, invents or redefines a constitutional provision in order to make new law that is consistent with its political or ideological preference.  That is what the U.S. Supreme Court did in Roe v Wade and what the NJ Supreme Court did in the Abbott decisions.

Constructionism is what a court does when it decides that the legislative or executive branches exceeded the power granted to them in the Constitution, like mandating people buy something they don’t want.

Moran, like Obama, probably knows the difference.  Also like Obama, he probably just doesn’t think the Constitution is that important.  That’s OK for Moran who hasn’t sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.  It’s not OK for the President who has sworn that oath.

The race card worked well for liberals in 2008.  The invoked it successfully to mute Obama’s poltical opponents in the Democratic primary and during the general election.  They appealed to ‘white guilt” to get Obama elected.  It was a disgusting and effective strategy.

But the race card is played out. It didn’t work in the politicization of the Trayvon Martin tragedy.  It didn’t work when Garofalo played it.  It didn’t work in 2010.

Moran should stop playing the race card.  Conservative opposition to ObamaCare has nothing to do with the Jim Crow laws, just as Governor Christie’s economic policies have nothing to do with how many of his cabinet members and staffers have ever ridden a bus.

Moran’s job is the inform, educate and persuade.   He should leave the obfuscation to politicians, activists and B-rate entertainers looking for their next gig.

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APP Plays The Race Card

By Art Gallagher

The ignorant fools on the Asbury Park Press editorial board have joined the left wing media chorus that will taint anyone who is critical of the Obama administration as racist.

In their editorial today, Fox resumes tired refrain, the disgraceful demagogues of Neptune smear Fox News, its viewers, or “devotees” as they call them, and “the right” as “bile-ridden,” stupid (“vacuous”), and racist.

The outcry over rapper Common’s appearance at the White House poetry night is what set off the race baiting yellow journalists of Gannett.

In case you missed it, Common is best known for his ” A Song For Assata” in which he glorifies JoAnne Chesimard, the former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member who murdered NJ State Trooper Werner Foerster on the NJ Turnpike in East Brunswick on May 2, 1973.   In “A Song For Assata” (Chesimard changed her name to Assata Skakur) Common wrote and sang, “Your power and pride is beautiful. May God bless your soul.”

Apparently Fox News broke the story of Common’s White House appearance.  The APP race mongers lament that Fox couldn’t give Obama “even a week” to bask in the success of the Bin Laden killing before “bashing” the President again.

The news of Common’s White House invitation made national news, including in the APP and its sister rags, prompting a strong reaction, especially from the New Jersey law enforcement community.  NJPBA President Tony Wieners  issued the following statement:

New Jersey State PBA Denounces Cop Killer Support

New Jersey State PBA President Anthony Wieners denounced rapper Common appearance at the White House. Wieners who is in Washington to honor officers during Police Week called Common’s take on Chesimard “utterly ridiculous”. “Lets not rewrite history to glamorize a terrorist from the 1970’s” , he said. “ In 1973 Chesimard killed a New Jersey State Trooper and then in 1979 she took two of our members hostage in her escape from jail, that’s the facts. While she may change her name, she may even have songs written about her, but in the end she is a cold blooded terrorist. No one should be praising her or lending her support.“

Wieners noted the irony of the controversy over Common occurred during Police Week. He should be ashamed of his presence at the White House this week while the nation’s law enforcement community gathers there to add more names to its wall of officers killed in the line of duty. “This week each year is our annual pilgrimage to Washington D. C. to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster is on that wall. As we pursue modern day terrorist, let us not forget those who made sacrifices to pursue the terrorist of our past. Let those terrorist of the past know that we will never falter in our attempts to bring them to justice.”

The APP apologises for Common because he wrote the rap more than a decade ago and he has written songs that extol “self-respect, community and taking responsibility your life and actions” since he glorified Chesimard.  They bash the “Fox chorus” condeming Common’s appearance at the White House as “ignorant” and “empty headed” because “most Fox commentors and fans” don’t appreciate the virtuous raps that Common wrote.

Well the APP apparently didn’t appreciate this Fox commentator who likened Common to Shakespere and said his lyrics are being taken out of context.  They ignored this Fox commentator  who wrote a poem of her own that says the President should be working on more pressing issues instead of attending a poetry reading.

The APP got one thing right in their disgraceful editorial.  They said:

What’s good about America is the ability of artists to express themselves freely, even when we disagree with their viewpoint or positions. What’s great about America is that even the ignorant get a soapbox to spew their empty-headed rhetoric.

That last line is self-referential, even though the APP didn’t mean it to be.

America would be even greater if the traditional 4th estate maintained its traditional role of skeptics of the government charged with holding our leaders to account.  The APP and the rest of the leftstream media should refrain from playing the race card every time criticism of their darling in the White House sticks.

The media’s use of the race card to silence Obama’s critics was very effective in the 2008 campaign, especially after they successfully used it to smear even former President Bill Clinton’s criticism of candidate Obama during the South Carolina primary.  We’ve seen that the media will employ such disgraceful tactics again in support of Obama during the 2012 campaign which has already started.  This is yellow journalism of the worst kind, designed to silence legitimate critics and thwart debate.

The APP should be ashamed.  Its customers, readers and advertisers alike, should put them on notice that there will be consequences to such irresponsible trash.

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