Screw It – I’m Voting For Him Because He’s Irish

This is why human beings suck. I’m up early during the week – the first one up in our house, usually – and so I’m cranky and sleep-deprived and most mornings I’ve had just about enough of you people and your election-related shenanigans. Is it too much to ask to log on to the Twitter machine without confronting this level of jack-assery on a daily basis?

Let me be clearer. Colin Powell supports Barack Obama because Barack Obama is black. Powell didn't support Clinton, Gore, or Kerry.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 25, 2012

Yes, that’s Brietbart.com’s editor-at-large Ben Shapiro, getting all racist-y on Twitter after this morning’s announcement that Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State under George W. Bush, and National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan, has endorsed Pres. Obama for reelection.

Mr. Powell explained it this way (via Eclectablog):

[N]ot only am I not comfortable with what Governor Romney is proposing for his economic plan, I have concerns about his views on foreign policy. The Governor, who was speaking on Monday night at the debate, was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. So I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy.

…

I mean, it’s a moving target. One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan, but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal. Same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern, which I’ve expressed previously in a public way, is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have, and he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust to modify as he goes along.

…

I think there’s some very, very strong neo-conservative views that are presented by the Governor that I have some trouble with. There are other issues as well, not just the economy and foreign policy. I’m more comfortable with President Obama and his administration when it comes to issues like what are we going to do about climate, what are we going to do about immigration? What are we going to do about education? … I do not want to see the new Obamacare plan thrown off the table. It has issues, you have to fix some things in that plan. But what I see when I look at that plan is 30 million of our fellow citizens will now be covered by insurance. And I think that’s good. We’re one of the few nations in the world, with our size, population and wealth, that does not have universal health care.

All of which seems well-reasoned to me, but Mr. Shapiro’s first impression was along the lines of: Look at this guy, being all black and all, liking the other black guy! The blacks always stick up for other blacks, man!

As you might imagine, Ben Shapiro was not the only white conservative howling like a stuck pig today. If you’ve got the stomach for it, wade through the comments section of this article on Glenn Beck’s organ, The Blaze. (Heh, heh, yes, I said “organ” … .) And before I could turn off Twitter this morning, I saw at least a half-dozen other right wingers making the same basic accusation as Shapiro and The Blaze’s commenters: When African Americans endorse African Americans, why … that’s racist!

But, you know, here’s the thing. I looked into this, and it turns out that we’ve had forty-two presidents and forty-three presidential administrations prior to Barack Obama’s tenure as No. 44 (Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897) … and guess what? Every one of those forty-two presidents before Barack Obama was white!

And you know what else? Every other major-party nominee has been white too, even the losers.

No, it’s true. It says so on the internet.

So, what that means is, from the country’s first presidential election in 1788 to and including the 2004 presidential election, every African American who voted in a presidential election had the choice of two white dudes, or the occasional, you know, Socialist Party candidate who happened to be black. Meaning – the real choice was always between two white dudes.

So when you say an African American, prominent or otherwise, only supports Pres. Obama because he’s black, YOU ARE AN IDIOT. African Americans have been voting for white candidates for as long as African Americans have been able to vote in this country – and that’s a subject for another blog post altogether.  So you really don’t get to accuse African American voters of being “racist” when a candidate like Barack Obama finally comes along and, lo and behold, his politics happen to align with the politics of many African Americans.

Especially when nobody bothers to ask a white voter like Ben Shapiro why he supports Mitt Romney.

Er, ah, um … that’s different!

And anyway, Ben, I’ve got news for you. Barack Obama’s Irish, too. And we Irish, man … we stick together.

Póg mo thóin, bitches!