MRC’s Notable Quotables: GOP Would Impeach Obama Just for Being Black

Now online: the August 4 edition of Notable Quotables, MRC’s bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. This week, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews sleazily blasts GOP voters who reacted with “dread” to Barack Obama — “that name and that face” — and who now would impeach him for no reason: “They never went looking for a reason. They never needed one. It was not what he did. It was, from the outset, who he was.”

Also, Univision’s Jorge Ramos lectures Hillary Clinton that “no government should be in the business of deporting endangered children,” while MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry equates the sending of National Guard troops to the border with 1950s segregation. Highlights are posted after the jump; the entire issue is posted online, with 20 quotes at www.MRC.org.

GOP Wants to Impeach Obama Just for Being Black

“Ten years ago, Barack Obama came upon the American public as a breath of fresh air. He spoke in ways that awakened our hopes, broke through the clouds of cheap politics and stormy rhetoric....But how many other Americans saw a different reckoning, when confronted with that name, ‘Barack Obama,’ right there on the ballot in front of them — how many saw that name and that face and that man with dread?...Check the numbers: 57 percent of the Republican Party wants this man run out of office and thrown to the curb. They can’t come up with a reason he deserves impeachment, but that’s not their fault. Not really. You see, they never went looking for a reason. They never needed one. It was not what he did. It was from the outset who he was.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the July 28 edition of Hardball, recalling the 10th anniversary of Obama delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.


No “Humanity” in GOP’s “Naked Abuse of Politics”

Co-anchor Chris Cuomo: “Where is the humanity in this? How did kids get lost in partisan politics?... I think it’s just one of the most naked abuses of politics I’ve seen, in terms of saying something is important, but not even going and dealing with it.”
Co-anchor Kate Bolduan: “Some of them are trying to, and they’re not even being allowed in.”...
Cuomo: “You spend weeks subpoenaing e-mails on, you know, on — what’s going on with the IRS, but you’re really not going to fight your way into see these kids? It’s ’cause you don’t want to.”
— Discussing GOP congressional critics of Obama’s handling of the border crisis on CNN’s New Day, July 14.

Jorge Hits Hillary from the Left: “Do You Have a Latino Problem?”

“Do you think you have a Latino problem?...Because recently you said about the Central American children coming to the United States that we have to send them back....Don’t we have a responsibility if something happens to them? I mean, I think no government should be in the business of deporting endangered children.”
— Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to Hillary Clinton in an interview shown on Fusion’s America, July 29.


Rick Perry, Just a Texas Version of Vladimir Putin?

“Rick Perry sending 1,000 National Guard troops to border to shoot small children. Could make good headlines — in Russia.”
— Tweet from Politico’s chief political columnist Roger Simon, July 21.

Impeding Illegal Immigration = Supporting Segregation

“Rick Perry was preceded in his call to send armed troops to confront children by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. He, of course, called the National Guard to stop the Little Rock Nine from their first day of school at Central High. The presence of children on buses integrating Boston schools in 1974 didn’t stop white crowds from confronting them with slurs and threats of violence, nor did it give pause to the adults who hurled objects and insults at six-year-old Ruby Bridges on the day she became the first African American child to desegregate an elementary school. And so when we look to children seeking safety at our borders and see instead an invasion to be defended against, a contagion to be contained, or a drain on resources that we just don’t want to share, that is a side of history on which we are choosing to stand.”
— MSNBC weekend host and Wake Forest University professor Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous show, July 26.


AP Has Second Thoughts About a Biased Tweet

“As much of world watches Gaza war in horror, members of Congress fall over each other to support Israel: http://apne.ws/1pnTgIG”
— Message posted July 29 by the Associated Press’s official Twitter account.

vs.

“Many U.S. lawmakers strongly back Israel in Gaza war (revises wording in this @AP tweet: http://apne.ws/Uzxs1v)”
— Message posted about 4 1/2 hours later from the same account.


Journalist Thinks Good Coverage = Israel “Losing the Media War”

“I think our network, this time around, and I think the media more generally — and now I’m talking about the New York Times and other places — have been doing a much better job in this conflict. I think the image that most Americans are seeing from this conflict, by in large, are images of the destruction in Gaza. I think that’s been the defining feature of this, and in fact, there’s all these people talking about how the Israelis are losing the media war for the first time.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, July 22.


Linking “Right-Wing Hatred” with JFK’s Death

“The right-wing hatred for John F. Kennedy was in some ways as extreme as the hatred for Barack Obama and nowhere was it more energized than Dallas in 1963....So why bring this up today?...Unfortunately, the venom, the incoherent conspiracy-mongering, the visceral loathing still exist. In fact, in one of the most obliviously obtuse acts of sacrilege imaginable, Dealey Plaza is now the regular site of open-carry demonstrations. That’s right, a group of looney gun proliferation activists meet regularly on the site of one of the most notorious acts of gun violence in the nation’s history to spout right-wing conspiracy theories about the President while ostentatiously waving around deadly weapons.”
— Salon writer Heather Digby Parton in a July 25 article. JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a communist who had defected to the Soviet Union.


From “Old-Fashioned Journalist” to Obama-Biden Mouthpiece

“Right after the election in 2008, I was the Washington bureau chief for Time. And I was an old-fashioned journalist, not an advocate, didn’t take sides in my job. But I was extremely excited personally about the Obama-Biden victory....”
— Jay Carney on CBS’s Late Show July 30, telling host David Letterman how he went to work as Press Secretary for Vice President Biden and later President Obama.

To read the entire August 4 edition of Notable Quotables, please visit www.MRC.org.