I know I am hard on Republicans sometimes. Well, just about all the time, unless you got back to Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln. You know, when Republicans used to be both progressive and supportive of African Americans.
So I would like to share some of my favorite Republican quotations. Just to remind us what is at stake this election.
"The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America.” Welfare is a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war... the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties." Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
- Fred Koch, father of David Koch, as a founding member of the John Birch Society, 1963
"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'N***er, n***er, n***er.' By 1968 you can’t say “n***er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N***er, n***er."
- Lee Atwater explaining the Republican's Southern Strategy, 1981
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."
- Ronald Reagan, August, 1980
Nelson Mandela's ANC uses "terrorist tactics" and "proclaims a goal of creating a communist state."
- President Ronald Reagan in a July, 1986 speech to the World Affairs Council
Nelson Mandela is a "terrorist train-bomber."
- Pat Buchanan, President Reagan's speech-writer
Apartheid "is the one foreign policy debate that the Left can get involved in and feel that they have the moral high ground," but South Africa is a "complicated situation."
- Grover Norquist criticizing anti-Apartheid activists, during a 1986 visit to South Africa promoted by white business leaders
South Africa is a "Christian country" because of its abortion policy; American companies should engage in "reinvestment" and buy Kruggerand coins to help boost the South African economy.
- Jerry Falwell following a 1985 visit to the Apartheid regime
Advocates of sanctions against apartheid South Africa are "allies of those who favor a one-party Marxist Government in South Africa."
- Pat Robertson, 1988
"I know we don't like apartheid, but the blacks in South Africa, in Soweto, don't have it all that bad."
- Pat Robertson, 1993
“The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization. I don’t have any problem at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago."
- Dick Cheney expressing no regrets on the 1986 vote he cast against a Congressional motion urging the release of Nelson Mandela from prison by the white South African government
"In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty."
- Ronald Reagan, April, 1982. The claim is not only completely untrue, it's grammatically incorrect (people are hanged, not hung).
"I served as a photographer in a U.S. Army unit assigned to film Nazi death camps."
- Ronald Reagan, November 1983, to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He repeated the story to Simon Wiesenthal in February, 1984. "Reagan never visited or filmed a concentration camp; he spent World War II in Hollywood, making training films with the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps." (source)
"In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not—repeat, did not— trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we."
- Ronald Reagan, denying the Iran-Contra Affair, November 1986
"A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not."
- Ronald Reagan, admitting that he lied about the Iran-Contra Affair, March 1987
If elected, "the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say to them, 'Read my lips: no new taxes.'"
- George H.W. Bush, August 18, 1988. He was elected and he raised taxes in 1991 to fill the massive deficit created by Reagan's tax cuts.
"Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day."
- Ron Paul, February 1990
"Rarely is the question asked, Is our children learning?"
- W
"I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war."
- George W. Bush falsely claiming in January, 2002, in West Virginia, that he served in Vietnam. He avoided military service and while in the Texas Air National Guard checked the box requesting not to be deployed overseas if eligible.
"You teach your child to read and he or her will pass a literacy test."
George W. Bush
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- George W. Bush, 2003. The CIA and British intelligence services both clarified that the British government had learned no such thing.
"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job. "
George W. Bush 9/21/05
"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we did an objective analysis."
"My education message will resignate among all parents."
George W. Bush New York Post, 1/19/2000
"These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans. Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money."
- George W. Bush, touting his tax cuts for the rich in January, 2003. The actual benefit to middle class Americans was only $217.
I do not believe we've put a guilty - I mean, innocent person to death in the state of Texas.
George W. Bush All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000 [Miller, 243] Note that Bush was never known to have spent more than half an hour on any matter, death penalty appeals included.
Please… don't kill me!
George W. Bush mocking what Karla Faye Tucker said, when asked, just before her execution, "What would you say to Governor Bush?", Talk, 9/99
JERRY FALWELL: The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this [the 9-11 attacks] because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur.
AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
- Jerry Falwell
If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.
- Jerry Falwell
More W
"I believe that the human being and the fish can coexist. Peacefully."
- W
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
- George W. Bush 8/6/04
"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
- W
"Mission Accomplished"
- W via an enormous banner that he had nothing to do with erecting when he gave a speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in which he claimed "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
"We found the weapons of mass destruction."
- George W. Bush falsely claiming in May, 2003, that WMD had been found in Iraq. None ever have been.
"The only [Katrina victims] we're seeing on television are the scumbags."
Glenn Beck, "The Glenn Beck Program," Sept. 9, 2005
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
- George W. Bush to FEMA Director Michael Brown
"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."
- Glenn Beck, 9/9/05
"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization...And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing]."
- Glenn Beck, 5/1/07
"Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings."
--Sarah Palin, unable to name a Supreme Court decision other than
Roe vs. Wade, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008
"All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years." --Sarah Palin, unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008
"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars... Never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”
- Sarah Palin "clarifying" her confusion about Africa being a continent not a country
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
- Sarah Palin on why she opposes the Affordable Care Act
As long as “voters believe there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community” the status quo would prevail.
- Frank Lutz, Republican strategist, emphasizing the importance of creating an appearance of doubt in the scientific community to kneecap any climate legislation, in 2002.
" I believe our federal government has lost its way. We need a leader who will stand and fight against an administration that is promoting central planning and a larger government at the expense of future generations."
- Michael Pompeo (R-KS) accusing the president of Marxist central planning, 2009
"“It is time for the President to quit playing the game of blaming the former administration and to lead."
- Michael Pompeo (R-KS), 2009
“Our opponent [then Senator Obama] voted to cut off funding for our troops. He did this even after saying that he wouldn’t do such a thing. And he said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians.’ I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women are doing in Afghanistan.”
- Sarah Palin at a campaign stop in 2008 where men booed and cried out "TREASON!"
"So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research. ... Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. ... The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening."
- Glenn Beck, 3/9/09
I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop. Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.
The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be "What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?"
What we don't have a right to is healthcare, housing, or handouts. We don't have those rights.
- Glenn Beck
"Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook ... Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate."
- Rush Limbaugh, Aug. 6, 2009
"I'm a huge supporter of women. What I'm not is a supporter of liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose. Feminism has led women astray. I love the women's movement — especially when walking behind it."
- Rush Limbaugh, 2/3/10
"[Obama] wouldn't have been voted president if he weren't black. Somebody asked me over the weekend why does somebody earn a lot of money have a lot of money, because she's black. It was Oprah. No, it can't be. Yes, it is. There’s a lot of guilt out there, show we're not racists, we'll make this person wealthy and big and famous and so forth.... If Obama weren't black he'd be a tour guide in Honolulu or he'd be teaching Saul Alinsky constitutional law or lecturing on it in Chicago."
- Rush Limbaugh, July 6, 2010
"Ms. Sotomayor and President Obama believe the job of a judge is to make policy, not interpret the law. It is for this reason that I am raising my voice today to call for the rejection of Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court."
- Michael Pompeo (R-KS)
"Instead of responding [to the Boston Marathon bombing], silence has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts, and more importantly still, in those that may well follow... the silence in the face of extremism coming from the best funded Islamic advocacy organizations and many mosques across America is deafening.”
- Michael Pompeo (R-KS) - in fact, dozens of Muslim organizations had spoken up in condemnation of the attack.
“Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis. Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.'”
- Ted Cruz comparing healthcare reform to the Nazis
"This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."
- Glenn Beck while employed by Fox News
“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have all that information yet.”
- Sarah Palin, February, 2011 - $1 to anyone who can tell me what the hell this means...
"Look, the wheels are coming off this (healthcare reform). The Teamsters are abandoning it. President Obama just granted all of Congress an exception. And he did it because Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats who passed this thing came begging and said, ‘Please, please, please let us out of Obamacare.’ This thing ain't working."
- Ted Cruz, Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 10, 2013. Politifact rated this statement false.
President Obama is “the most radical President ever to occupy the Oval Office,” and had hidden from voters a secret agenda - “the government taking over our economy and our lives... Victory, or death!”
- Ted Cruz speaking at a Koch Brothers funded event in 2010; As the crowd rose to its feet and cheered, he quoted the defiant words of a Texan at the Alamo.
"Baby Killer!" - Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), member of the Tea Party Caucus, shouting at Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) as he spoke on the House floor during the health care vote.
"I'm tired of some people calling me wacky."
Sharron Angle, March 21, 2010
"I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen."
Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, May 21, 2010 talking about the BP oil spill and how unreasonably hard on the company President Obama was being
"If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."
Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, floating the possibility of armed insurrection, interview with right-wing talk radio host Lars Larson in Portland, OR, January 2010
"We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we're having weekly shootings practically. We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS."
Christine O'Donnell, during a 1998 appearance on Bill Maher's 'Politically Incorrect'"
"What does it say about the college co-ed [Sandra] Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex."
-Rush Limbaugh, referring to a Georgetown Law School student who was denied the right to speak at a congressional hearing on contraception, in which she planned to discuss a friend of hers who needed contraception to prevent the growth of cysts, February 29, 2012
"A Georgetown coed told Nancy Pelosi's hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex they're going broke, so you and I should have to pay for their birth control. So what would you call that? I called it what it is. So, I'm offering a compromise today: I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. ... So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."
-Rush Limbaugh, March 1, 2012
"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."
- Rush Limbaugh
“[P]roviding—providing fairness to the American people, under Obamacare, is—all we’re asking for. My goodness. They give big businesses a waiver. They give all these unions a waiver. And yet they’re forcing the American people to buy a product, buy a product that they do not want and cannot afford.”
- John Boehner October, 2013, explaining why his party shut down the government.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”
— Mitt Romney, January 2012
”As president, I will create 12 million new jobs.”
— Mitt Romney, Second presidential debate
”Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.”
— Mitt Romney, same debate, 45 minutes later (Oct. 16, 2012)
”Some girls rape easy.”
– Roger Rivard (R-WI), October 2012
”I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
– Richard Mourdock (R-IN) October 2012
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down”
- Todd Aiken, R-MO
47%
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax... [M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
- Mitt Romney, 2012
“We need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security.”
“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy.”
- Wayne LaPierre, NRA CEO, December 21 and 23, 2012
"We’ve got a humanitarian crisis on the border, and that has to be dealt with. But the president clearly isn’t going to deal with it on his own, even though he has the authority to deal with it on his own."
- John Boehner, July, 2014, criticizing the president for not taking presidential action on immigration after Congress failed to take action. As an aside, Boehner is suing the president for abuse of executive power.
