Does the Republican Party Senate Leadership Treat President Obama Differently Because He is African-American?

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On the night of Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009 for his first term as our elected President of the United States a group of top GOP luminaries quietly gathered in a Washington steakhouse to lick their wounds and ultimately create the outline of a plan for how to deal with the incoming administration.

"The room was filled. It was a who's who of ranking members who had at one point been committee chairmen, or in the majority, who now wondered out loud whether they were in the permanent minority.".

Among them were Senate power brokers Jim DeMint, (SC), Jon Kyle(AZ) and Tom Coburn(OK), and conservative then congressmen Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan.

They strategized for more than three hours; after which, they concluded they that going forward they needed to fight Obama on everything.

And so it was.

Obama proposed an $815 billion stimulus bill (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). Then House Republican Chairman John Boehner complained that the bill would spend too much, was too late, and contained too many Democratic goodies.

He urged his members "to trash it on cable, on YouTube, on the House floor: It's another run-of-the-mill, undisciplined, cumbersome, wasteful Washington spending bill ... I hope everyone here will join me in voting no!"

Additionally, then House Majority Whip Eric Cantor's staff initiated a "walk-back" strategy. The idea was to convey momentum. "You want the members to feel like, Oh, the herd is moving. I've got to move with the herd," explains Rob Collins, Cantor's chief of staff at the time. That way, even if a dozen Republicans ultimately defected, it would look as if Obama failed to meet expectations."

The AP reported that Boehner had urged Republicans to oppose the stimulus. Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs handed Obama a copy of the story in the Oval Office, just before the President left for Capital Hill to make his case for the stimulus.

After just a week in office, this visit by president Obama was an unprecedented visit to the opposition. "You know, we still thought this was on the level," Gibbs says. Obama political aide David Axelrod says that after the President left for the meeting, White House aides were buzzing about the insult. And they didn't even know that Cantor had vowed to whip a unanimous vote against the bill -- which, ultimately, he did.
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"It was stunning that we'd set this up and, before hearing from the President, they'd say they were going to oppose this," Axelrod says. "Our feeling was; we were dealing with a potential disaster of epic proportions that demanded cooperation. If anything was a signal of what the next two years would be like, it was that."

David Axelrod was prophetic. There followed repetitive Republican Congressional intransigence to virtually everything President Obama proposed. The Affordable Care Act, so-called "Obamacare "initiative became the lightening rod of consistent opposition to Obama. After it was successfully enacted by Congress, a court challenge was initiated asserting that the bill was unconstitutional.

In a 5-4 decision Obamacare was upheld by the US Supreme Court in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Since the initial passage of "Obamacare" Republican House majority has voted more than 60 times to repeal it.

During President Obama's first State of The Union speech to Congress, September 9th, 2009, Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina publicly interrupted the President during his speech, shouting "You Lie!" . The immediate public outcry about his outburst prompted Wilson to apologize saying: ""While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

The issue is not Wilson's apology, but why he felt he could speak such a public outburst during the President's State of The Union speech. He publicly interrupted and rebuked America's first African-American President of the United States because his post slavery conditioned white supremacist mindset enabled him to think that HE COULD do it

This incident occurred during President Obama first term. He failed to let the Republicans in Congress know immediately after his election that he wore a velvet glove over an iron fist. In short, that he "took names and kicked asses" of ANY persons in Congress who would not respect him as President.

Obama's presidency was further complicated because it appeared that the President and several of his close advisors genuinely believed that his election indicated that our nation had crossed the bridge from the 20th to the 21st century on the issue of race in America.

In hindsight they also believed that our nation, in the November presidential election of 2008 had achieved what the Congressional Reconstruction Senators Charles Sumer, Benjamin Wade, Representative Thaddeus Stevens and others opposed to slavery, had failed to achieve during 1867-1877 following the re-election and subsequent assassination of President Lincoln in 1865.

Senator McConnell and members of Congress elected with support of Tea Party Conservative voters sent a message to Congress that Obama was to be a one term president only.

The recent effort to prevent an Obama recommended appointee to full the vacancy on the US Supreme Court arising from death of Justice Anthony Scalia is unambiguous, clear, and unequivocal. Republican Congressional leadership make it abundantly clear that Barack Hussein Obama, BECAUSE HE IS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN, IS NOT ENTITLED TO exercise those Constitutional rights vested in him as President of the United States following his reelection for a second four-year term.

Their "theory" under a novel interpretation of our Constitution is that an African-American, when elected president, his or her term only extends for three and a half years, not a full four-year term. In their view, contrary to the unambiguous words in our Constitution, President Obama's powers as president to appoint a person to fill a vacancy on our Supreme Court ceases to exist for a full last year of his elected four-year term.

Has THIS interpretation of the powers of a president to exercise his constitutional authority to appoint members to our US Supreme Court, EVER been applied to limit the power of 43 prior white male presidents to fill a vacancy to the Supreme Court during the last year of their presidency?

So, I repeat my question: Is the Republican Party Senate Leadership Treating President Obama Differently Because He is African-American?

Some may say in reading this, "Here we go again, an African-American playing 'the race card' any time they don't like what is being said or done to by a white person to President Obama". We don't believe ANY African-American should be immune to criticism because they are black.

In the case of President Obama, we only suggest that the so-called "race card" would not even be a viable issue in America today, if everyone" playing cards" were dealt their card from the same non-racist "Dec"

What do you think?

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