Saturday Night Card Game (Fareed Zakaria plays the “John Smith card”)

Saturday Night Card Game (Fareed Zakaria plays the “John Smith card”)

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

This is a follow up to two prior posts on the attempt by the mainstream media and left-blogosphere to frame the issue of Obama’s constitutional qualification to be President as rooted in racism.  Obama is being challenged, the argument goes, only because he is not white.

As I pointed out, however, the race card as to Obama’s constitutional qualification does not hold up because there is a long history of white presidential candidates and presidents being challenged, including allegations of a concealed birth in a foreign country:

• They Will Not Let The “Birther” Issue Drop Against That White Republican President
• Your race card narrative does not fit, so you must acquit 

Nonetheless, the meme goes on day after day in the mainstream media, without so much as a peek at history.

Tonight it’s Fareed Zakaria’s turn to declare (emphasis mine):

Then there is the ‘birther’ issue. I regard this as coded racism, frankly. I don’t think there’s any other word for it.

For goodness’ sake, George Stephanopoulos displayed Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth on network TV and this rumor still doesn’t die. Put it this way: If the President was a white man named John Smith with the other background issues being the same – foreign student father, mother in Hawaii, etc. – would there be any of these dark insinuations? Trump should be ashamed of himself. But then, I suppose, he wouldn’t be Donald Trump.

To a very, very limited extent Zakaria is right.  We have no evidence that a white man named John Smith would have his citizenship or birthplace challenged.

But we do have evidence that white men with the following names would not be so lucky: 

Chester A. Arthur
Barry Goldwater
John McCain
George Romney
Lowell Weicker, Jr.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

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Related Posts:
If Gov. Neil Abercrombie Really Wanted The Records …
They Just Can’t Let Go Of The Birthplace And Religion Issues
The Bizarre “Birther” Intellectual Dance

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