South Carolinians sending a black Republican, Tim Scott, to the U.S. Senate with more votes than his colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham, proves that the cynical race-baiting practiced by Democrats is losing its power to compel party loyalty, veteran civil rights activist Niger Innis told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
"That's their fear," Innis, executive director of TheTeaParty.net, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, in regard to Democrats. "Their fear is that the liberal monopoly that has dominated black communities and urban communities for over 50 years, that it's being challenged."
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"Tim Scott, when he won his election as senator, he became the first black senator popularly elected in the Deep South, ever," said Innis. "Because even when blacks won after Reconstruction, they were elected by state legislators because that was the rule — not just for blacks, but for any senator.
"Scott got more votes than Lindsey Graham did in South Carolina," said Innis. "You would think that this would be a moment of celebration for our country, a moment of celebration for the South, a moment of celebration for blacks, whites and all Americans.
Yet, the liberals have to play their racial game."
Scott, a former House member from South Carolina appointed to the vacant Senate seat in 2013, was ridiculed as
a Republican puppet by one NAACP official, and called worse on Twitter after his election.
Innis, formerly of the Congress on Racial Equality, said that the political game-playing doesn't stop at race.
"I call it the "Sharptonization" of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement," he said, referring to civil rights activist Al Sharpton.
"Al Sharpton came to fame by perpetuating a racial fraud," said Innis,"basically waving the racial bloody red shirt, and that's what unfortunately too many Democrats and too many progressives do. They don't argue the issues, they don't argue policy, they're out with their bloody red shirt being for women one day, blacks the other day and Latinos another day. They're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
"Quite frankly," he said, "I will say there's a little bit of bigotry involved in that process because you're presuming that individuals — because of the virtue of their ethnicity or their gender — are one-issue people."
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Innis said that President Barack Obama operates according to the same one-issue principle in identity politics — and that makes him worse than a bigot.
"He's a cynic," said Innis. "He will use whatever lever he needs to keep himself perpetuating power. In some ways, that's even worse than a bigot who just might be ignorant."
He said Obama is also canny enough to wield power against his political opponents, while "throwing caution to the wind" after last week's drubbing of Democrats in the midterm election.
He cited the president's stated intention to act on his own, without Congress, to legalize undocumented immigrants — a move that could bait Hill Republicans into a disproportionate response that leaves Obama looking like the victim in the end.
"Well, the trap, potentially, of course is the big 'I' word: impeachment," said Innis. "There's going to be a desire. I know within my organization, within the grassroots of my organization of the tea party movement generally, there's going to be a big drive for impeaching Obama. I don't know if that's the right move. … We need to play our cards very carefully and beware of the mouse trap that Obama might be trying to set for us."
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