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Louisiana Democrat after calling Obamacare opponents racist: "I didn't call anyone racist"

by Erika Johnsen

posted at 12:41 pm on May 31, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

The obligatory followup to Allahpundit's post yesterday chronicling the the rhetorical misadventure of the Democratic state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, who during a session informed her fellow legislators that — and I quote — criticisms of ObamaCare come down to "the race of this African American president." When she was later asked to apologize for and/or defend her comments, she effectively did neither (h/t theWeekly Standard):

I'm not stepping away from anything that I said on the floor. I didn't call anyone a racist. I referenced some of the conversations that I'd had with colleagues that, you know, shared with me that one of the factors, it's not always the factor. I didn't say that everybody's decision was based on that. But certainly one of the factors was politics around it and race, the issue of race. So, that has kind of stirred up some folks that are not, I guess, accustomed to having that conversation openly but I think that it's time that we not ignore the issue.

Er… how is it that you can at once insist that much of the opposition to ObamaCare is based on race, but that you are not not calling anybody a racist? Pretty sure that comes down to just about the same thing, whether or not she was calling anybody out specifically. And no, by the way, she did not say that racism was "one of the factors" for opposition; she actually said that race is "what it comes down to," as if Republicans would be all too happy to blithely accept universal health care if only it were somebody else that had offered it and their objections are not in fact mainly due to the concern that a bureaucratic takeover of a gigantic sector of the economy will in the long run result in much more harm than good, o ye of little faith. (Say, where else have we heard this type of argument recently?)

Going one step further in her sorry-I'm-not-sorry, the state senator called for an apology from Governor Bobby Jindal on behalf of the people of Louisiana.

He declined.

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Louisiana Democrat after calling Obamacare opponents racist: "I didn't call anyone racist"
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/31/louisiana-democrat-who-called-obamacare-opponents-racist-i-didnt-call-anyone-racist/

John Hames