If It Walks Like A Duck

And your posterity …

There’s an old saw in American politics, and it goes like this:

Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) may have coined the phrase when he wrote “when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

This is an open letter to Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell, and I would say this: the villains of History never know that they are villains. They manage to rationalize to themselves that their monstrousness is done for the best and noblest of reasons. And that’s probably what you did. But you are about to join the august ranks of the rank, and I thought I’d give you a heads up.

Because you’re racists, pure and simple. 

Oh, you may not think so. You’ll puff and prattle and indignantly deny it, but your actions are indisputable. Listen:

The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily. The Republicans had agreed on a way forward: Go after Geithner. (And indeed Kyl did, the next day: ‘Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it—please?’)

Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies. (Eight days later, Minority Whip Cantor would hold the House Republicans to a unanimous No against Obama’s economic stimulus plan.)

Begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves. (The first National Republican Congressional Committee attack ads would run in less than two months.)

Win the spear point of the House in 2010. Jab Obama relentlessly in 2011. Win the White House and the Senate in 2012.

“You will remember this day,” Draper reports Newt Gingrich as saying on the way out. “You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”

That’s from Sam Stein’s report on Robert Draper’s new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Draper’s pedigree in journalism is impeccable, so don’t try to go there. Stein’s reporting is credible, so don’t try to go there.

You said, in actions much louder than words: We ain’t a gonna have us no nigger president.

And you flouted the will of the American people, as expressed in the election of 2008. And you have adamantly disgraced yourselves and your posterity by behaving EXACTLY as Ku Klux Klan members would have acted in your place: the fostering of the “birther” slander. The coddling of the heckler at the State of the Union address. The adamant refusal to so much as acknowledge “President Obama” preferring instead “Obama.”

I really don’t have to cite chapter and verse here. You know it all too well.

You faced a nation in a deep economic crisis — of YOUR making and willing collaboration — and did NOTHING. You aided and abetted an extremist and reductionist movement called ‘The Tea Party’ that demanded a reduction in the massive debt YOU piled up with your illegal and insane wars and your “homeland security” depredations. And then, when you took the House of Representatives in 2010, you did NOTHING (unless you count your endless anti-abortion strategems to be “something”) about dealing with the debt crisis YOU used to take the House.

You spent the summer of 2011 freaking out the financial community with teasing about a government shutdown or default on the national debt, KNOWING that it would harm any recovery. But you couldn’t stand to have a nigger president (I say what your deeds have fairly screamed from day ONE), and you betrayed us, the American people, just to try and keep him a “one term president.”

And you even pretended that the recession was President Obama’s fault.

You have silently chuckled when the haters of your party have slandered the First Lady as “Mooch” and been more than happy to do ANYTHING — even throwing your own nation under the bus — to destroy this presidency.

You have egged on the endless and lawless acts of personal and political secession in states from South Carolina to Arizona. You have intentionally attempted to sabotage the machinery of the Federal government, blocking endless nominations and appointments — even entire agencies – and scream that jobs are more important than pollution, that imaginary babies are more important than real women, that posturing during a national emergency is more important than that nation that you purport to serve.

Knowing full well the historic implications of this nation’s first Black president, you chose an ahistorical strategy that will haunt you to the grave and beyond.

And now you will have your reward, history’s reward:

You will be seen as racists. Period.

You will attempt to weasel out of it, but, alas, your actions have spoken with a thunder that all of your sophistries and buzzwords will not mask, nor can your army of media goons silence.

If you walk like the Klan and swim like the Klan and quack like the Klan, then you’re Klan.

I hope you wanted something more out of life than a couple of bridges named after you. Because, at best, that’s what you’ll get.

The American people will remember that a bunch of hateful old white men who pretended descent from the “Party of Lincoln” but really only espoused old “Lost Cause” values, shamed the nation and shamed themselves by turning their backs on everything that this country stood for.

And all the while, you justify yourselves using the writings of a woman whose main protagonists were terrorists: Howard Roarke and John Galt.

And you follow the “Atlas Shrugged” model to try and bring down our President and our Nation.

Who would NOT adjudge you villains of history? And who will defend your soiled and disgraced names against the verdict of history?

You have a slim chance to make amends, but, as it is, prepare yourselves to bunk with Roger Taney and William Rehnquist, with Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis in that fine circle of Hell that accepts the likes of you.

You have damned yourselves.

If it looks like the Klan, walks like the Klan, quacks like the Klan and treats the President of the United States of America like a shoeshine boy, it’s the Klan.

Quack, quack, Klan boys.

May your God have mercy on your souls.

Courage.

==============

UPDATE 6:55 PM PDT:  This post lays out the particulars, in detail.

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