On the March 19 edition of Hardball, Republican pundit Michael Steele and guest host Jonathan Capehart were strongly critical of claims by Sen. Dick Durbin that Republicans were holding up a confirmation vote on Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch because she's black.
"What the hell is Dick Durbin doing?!" the liberal Capehart, a Washington Post opinion writer complained, moments later lamenting to Steele and Democratic strategist Steve McMahon that the Illinois Democrat was most likely "mak[ing] himself a distraction to the real issue."
For his part, Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman, blasted Durbin as well, assailing the penchant liberal Democrats have had in the Obama era to whip out the race card as the weapon of first resort:
I don't buy it [that there's a racial element to opposing Lynch] and he's full of crap. I mean, this is such a bunch of noise, unnecessary noise, injecting race into this process is absolutely ludicrous, this is the politics of Washington political nominations.
This is how it's played out. Durbin himself has played this game with judicial nominees who have been African-American, as Sen. McCain has pointed out and others have pointed out, so this is absolutely crazy to even bring this into the conversation over what is a political squabble, a tit-for-tat between the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate and ultimately the White House.
You know, I just totally think this is out of bounds and it just takes it to a place it doesn't need to go. I'm just tired of liberals thinking they can play the civil rights card and just throw around these phrases, you know, back of the bus, and church bombings, and all the other stuff that they tend, the invectives they bring up from the past that this is somehow tragic beyond words that this is happening.This is politics in Washington. Give me a break!
[...]
Steve [McMahon], this has nothing to do... this has nothing to do with her race. This has to do with her position on executive orders. This is what this is all about folks, her answers on executive orders was not one that Republicans liked. It was on immigration. That's right. It was not one that they liked, it's not one that they want.
They do not support a nominee who believes that the president could act with this level of impunity. That's what this is about. It has nothing to do with her race. Now, I think she should be confirmed. I think she's eminently qualified for the job, but let's not forget the politics of what's going on here.
This is why we can't have a discussion about race in this country, because we always wrap the wrong stuff around it. This is politics. This has nothing to do with her race.
"This is why we can't have nice things, apparently," Capehart responded in agreement to that last line.
Of course, the MSNBC network is a huge part of the problem as Steele and Capehart accurately diagnosed it. Had race-obsessed Chris Matthews not been on vacation this week, who knows how the coverage of the Durbin matter might have played out last night and this evening.
