How pathetic. Jim Clyburn chose Martin Luther King Day to smear Mitt Romney with the shop-worn charge of racism.
Straining absurdly to make his accusation, the South Carolina Dem, appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show, somehow managed to equate Romney's criticism of the politics of envy with the people who sought to keep Rosa Parks in the back of the bus. Video after the jump.
AL SHARPTON: Let me show you, one of the most contemptible statements to people that are struggling around these working-class issues was made by Willard Mitt Romney. Let me show you what he said the night he won the Iowa caucuses. He kind of dismissed the drive to close the income gap and to deal with economic inequality like people were just jealous or envious of the rich. Watch this, congressman.
MITT ROMNEY: President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. And in the last few days we've seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation. The country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.
SHARPTON: Bitter politics of envy, like there's no legitimate concern for what you and I have just talked about, the overwhelming increase in the richest's income while the stagnation of working-class and poor people. But the problem is we're just envious. How do people talk about they believe in the American Dream, less known [sic] King's dream, when they have a public policy of taking away from those that already have the least and act as though if they say something about it, they're engaged in the politics of envy?
JAMES CLYBURN: Well, you know, that's a little bit like saying to Rosa Parks, that you are just jealous, envious, of that man who's got a seat on this bus because you want a seat on the bus.
