From [HERE] Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) lambasted President Obama this week for creating a voter outreach group called “African-Americans for Obama,” calling the move “worse than sad.”
Gingrey’s comments came on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show Tuesday. The host attacked Obama’s campaign for creating the group, speculating that if presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney created a group called “White Folks for Romney,” “the country would go bananas!” Gingrey agreed, going on to accuse Obama of using “African-Americans for Obama” to “create divisiveness” and pit “one race against the other.” “It really is worse than sad,” Gingrey declared:
LIDDY: President Obama [made] a speech in which he forms an organization he calls “African Americans for Obama”. Can you imagine what the hue and cry would be if Mitt Romney got up and said, “I’m organizing white folks for Romney.” The country would go bananas!
GINGREY: Well they absolutely would. I would like to think in 2012, thinking back to 1965 and the Civil Rights Act and everything that has occurred to improve race relationships, that we would be over most of that racial divide. I guess you always have some prejudices that exist in the minds and hearts of certain individuals. To use it as a political tool to get out the base is sad. It really is worse than sad. President Obama is going to get 95% if not more of the African American vote and I can understand that. I think we all can understand that. To use that and to go out and try to create divisiveness or one race against the other, it’s not just that, it’s one gender against the other, male versus female. I’m sick of all that and I think the American people are too.
Gingrey didn’t have a problem in 2008 when John McCain announced his “Hispanics for McCain” leadership team. Nor did he say anything in 2004 when President Bush created “African-Americans for Bush.” Same in 2000 with “Arab Americans for Bush/Cheney,” “Women for Dole” in 1996; “Asian Americans for Bush/Quayle” in 1992; and “Hispanics for Bush” in 1988.
Indeed, only now that a black president would have the audacity to create an outreach group geared towards African-Americans does Gingrey take offense.