Craig Shirley: Carter still playing politics of division
By: Craig Shirley
OpEd Contributor
September 23, 2009
There he goes again.
Jimmy Carter, former Jim Crow man, has accused millions of his fellow Americans of engaging in the type of racial politics that marked his political career for years, even up to the eve of the 1980 presidential election and for which he has never apologized or acknowledged.
Branding his opponents as racists is nothing new for the old, self-described “redneck.” In the fall of 1980, he and his minions unleashed one of the most vicious campaigns in recent American history against his opponent, Ronald Reagan.
The attacks were so unprecedented, Nancy Reagan did something which was unprecedented at the time; she appeared in a television commercial taking it to President Carter over the slurs against “Ronnie.” Carter had shamefully accused his GOP opponent of wanting to divide American, “black from white, Christian from Jew…”
It was a curious and more importantly nasty and unfounded attack, as Reagan had a long history of fighting racism and anti-Semitism. As a young man playing football for Eureka College, several African-American members were barred from staying at a “whites only” hotel. While their coach tried to make some other accommodations, Reagan took his teammates to his home, where his parents kindly took them in.
In the 1940’s, Reagan quit a country club in Los Angeles in protest when he discovered it had a policy of barring Jewish members. As governor of California, Reagan appointed more blacks to positions in his administration, hundreds more than his so-called progressive predecessors, including Earl Warren and Pat Brown...
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...The irony in Carter’s attack on the Tea Party protesters is that his 1976 campaign was based in part on attacking the elites of Washington, the lobbyists, the bankers, the inside traders. Precisely what has the Tea Party protesters up in arms today. Indeed, Carter wanted to reduce their power and influence and give Americans a government “as good” as they were.
If Carter was true to his revolutionary campaign of the bicentennial year, he’d be defending the Tea Party protesters, not smearing them.What’s got them upset is not racism, but elitism. Carter, in 1976, would have torn into tax cheats like Timmy Geithner and Kathleen Sebilius.
In his dotage, Carter should give his fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt, seeing they are lusting in their hearts not for racism or women, but for freedom and ethics in their government.
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