The Democratic senator from the formerly great state of Illinois, Dick Durbin, is also the second-ranking Democrat in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. I don't know why I should think that would impose a level of reasonableness on his statements, but at 70, he is old enough to have earned the right to be stupid.
He has not earned, however, and never will, the right to be a hypocrite, not on race and not on anything else. But there he is, according to the Washington Post, protesting the deliberative process on the nomination of Loretta Lynch as Attorney General:
“And so, Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be
attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes
to the Senate calendar,” Durbin said on the Senate floor Wednesday
morning. “That is unfair. It’s unjust. It is beneath the decorum and
dignity of the United States Senate. This woman deserves fairness.”
Now, I don't pretend to speak for the folks in control of the Senate, but we do know that Eric Holder is not going off into the sunset until a new AG is confirmed. We also know that every Senate Republican and probably half of the Democrats can't wait to see the back end of the horse that Holder rides out on. So they'd love to confirm a replacement.
No, the delay and the deliberative process has far more to do with the Senate not wanting to make a mistake on Miss Lynch that leaves our country with the Justice Department under a race-baiting ideologue, criminal socialist and Sharpton pal of the type it has been led by since 2009. Let's face it, they can't wait to get rid of Holder, but not at the cost of, well, another Holder.
But no, Durbin goes off in public and does his "back of the bus" thing as if he has been the champion of black female Cabinet appointees since he came to the Senate in the Harding Administration. Yeah, well, no on the "champion" thing.
Now, the Democrats are the champions of form-over-substance, as exemplified by the current president, a man who brought to the White House no experience to speak of, and won based on his skin color and the novelty of it (and the fact that in 2008 he was not George W. Bush), and mastery of the TelePrompTer. Everything with Democrats is about form, because the substance of their ideas hasn't worked, ever, anywhere. But you have to be the "right" form, too.
Condoleezza Rice, the daughter of a Birmingham, Alabama minister, got to college when she was 15. By 26 she had earned a doctorate in international affairs and became an expert in Soviet issues -- and, not that it mattered, an accomplished pianist. It was she who provided the tutoring for George W. Bush on Russia and other key foreign countries during his first election campaign, and became his national security adviser.
Condoleezza Rice is also black. She also does not sit in the back of the bus, and earned her place in history for her intelligence and knowledge in foreign affairs, and the content of her character, far more than the color of her skin.
That does not appear to have mattered to the race-conscious-when-it-suits-him Dick Durbin. When Dr. Rice came up for Senate confirmation in 2005, as noted in the contemporary account on cnn.com:
"Dr. Condoleezza Rice was in the room, at the table, when decisions
were made, and she has to accept responsibility for what she said,"
Durbin said, whereupon he voted "no" to Dr. Rice's candidacy. However, smarter heads prevailed and she was confirmed as the first black Secretary of State.
Dick Durbin has every right to vote for whomever he chooses and against whomever he chooses. He does not, however, have the right to be a race-baiter -- no one does -- and to stand up and be a hypocrite, playing the race card when a black female candidate replacing a very controversial incumbent is examined carefully, but blithely opposing another because her ideology doesn't suit his tender sensibilities.
The Senate is not "Borking" Loretta Lynch. The majority members, all of whom would dearly love a new AG and the exit of the incumbent, are carefully making sure that the proposed replacement would not do things like trying to take over a town's police department based on an event magnified by a totally false account.
Loretta Lynch could be of Italian descent, or Chinese, Hispanic or Pakistani. She could be a Martian, for all anyone cares. The color of her skin is about the least important attribute the Senate is looking at in deciding to whom to entrust the reins of Justice.
All the Senate should care about is that she is not Eric Holder. Or Dick Durbin.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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