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America Voted to End Racism in 2008, But Barack Obama Didn’t Let It Happen

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 14,2020

RUSH: We go to Peter in Ontario, Canada, to get started on the phones. Welcome, sir. Great to have you with us today.

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, you’re in our family, you’re in our prayers. Rush, two points very quickly. First of all, 23 years I lived in downtown Philly. I had a lot of Philly cop friends. You know Nick’s on 19th, the roast beef spot. All those cops always around there. I know you’ve been there. But I gotta tell you something. Those good old boys, they’d be pulling the people out in front of that hospital quicker than you can say jack. You know, Rush, that it’s the Obama administration that started all this. Instead of policy, all they could do was, you know, pull the race card on everything around them.

RUSH: Give me an example of what you mean when you say that Obama’s administration is responsible for what is thought of the cops today. Give me an example. You sound very certain, but I want to know exactly what you mean.

CALLER: You know, it was always the cop’s fault. Look at the beer — you remember the beer thing with the —

RUSH: Oh, yeah, the Skip Gates. Skip Gates. Skip Gates gets arrested, his house was broken into, get arrested for it. Obama called the cop stupid, and the Cambridge policeman in Boston stupid and then arranges a beer summit in the White House for Skip Gates and the cop to talk it out.

CALLER: He would go against the cops before he even had facts.

RUSH: That’s true. In that instance —

CALLER: Every time.

RUSH: Well, see this —

CALLER: Every time.

RUSH: The thing about Obama, the reason I wanted just one example, just one example so the caller can be validated and verified — look, I can’t be expected to do everything here. And this a great example. And one of the things that I don’t think gets enough comments — and it didn’t at the time — is the racial division created in this country by Obama and the Obama administration. And it was done purposefully. And it was a strategic part of implementing whatever aspect of the Obama agenda.

Now, a lot of Americans — let me position it this way. There were a lot of white Americans who are not racists, they’re not bigots, they don’t even know what white supremacy means, and this white privilege stuff. All they knew was they’re sick and tired of being called racist just ’cause they’re white. They’re sick and tired of the countries being labeled as racist.

So they couldn’t wait to vote for Obama. They didn’t care if Obama was a communist, a Marxist, or whatever he was. He was black, and so they were gonna vote for him. The reason they were gonna vote for him was so it could be proven that they were not racist and that the country isn’t racist. How could a racist country elect an African-American president, is the way they thought about it. And there were millions of white Americans who thought about it exactly that way.

And the purpose, the reason, the objective for voting for Obama was to, for once and all, get rid of this silly idea that America has made no progress whatsoever in race relations because these people believe the exact opposite, that lots of progress has been made. There’s still more to go. Nobody thinks we’ve reached perfection on this. But there is no case that can be made that we haven’t done a thing. We’ve done lots.

So they wanted to prove it. They wanted there to be no doubt. So many white Americans voted for Obama hoping that his election would end forever the debate and the assertion that America is a racist nation. What those people didn’t know because they are not ideologically, shall I say, trained, they were not ideologically awakened. They didn’t have the slightest idea that such an assertion was never, ever gonna be permitted.

In fact, the election of Barack Obama was gonna be used to divide the people of the country even more, because dividing the people of the country was Obama’s objective. How’d they do it? Very simple. Any Obama proposal that was not universally agreed to and accepted by everybody was said to be racist. The opposition to Obama’s agenda was said to be racist by people who had voted for him, by people who had voted for him to wipe out this whole idea. Any criticism of Obama was said to be racist.

You were not even allowed to criticize. The president of the United States. It was impermissible to criticize him. It was impermissible to criticize his policies. Imagine, folks, to not be able to criticize the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the country to not be able, using the First Amendment, to criticize policies, you have to shut up, otherwise you’re a racist?

They milked it. They used that to the maximum ability they could. Racial division led us to Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Racial division is exactly what the left wanted. And we see now why.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sterling, Massachusetts. This is John. You’re next. It’s great to have you, sir.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Mr. Limberg. [sic] Two segments ago you made a statement of why people, especially white people, voted for Mr. Obama. I’m a retired police officer, and I felt in my heart it was time to give a black person a chance, and that’s exactly why I voted for Mr. Obama. And I voted for him the first time and then I realized that I made a big mistake and I did not vote for him the second time.

RUSH: But you did vote for him the first time because you hoped doing so would prove to one and all that we are not a racist nation?

CALLER: Exactly true. You were right on the money. You said it exactly —

RUSH: So what went wrong? The guy was elected. Why, look it now. After electing the first African-American, now it’s worse than ever in America. How do you explain that?

CALLER: Absolutely. And especially what’s happening to police officers. I’m glad I’m retired. I don’t know what to say. I’m just glad I’m retired.

RUSH: Well, you know, I know a lot of people with that sentiment. A lot of people are glad they’re out of it now. But, folks, it’s still a serious question. Thank you very much, John, for the – (interruption) I heard how he pronounced my name. I got that, but that’s no big deal. He’s probably been talking to Brian Stelter.

Look. This is a serious question. In 2008, a tremendous number of white Americans, many of them Republicans, voted for Barack Obama for one reason: African-American. They wanted to vote, they were eager. They couldn’t wait. They wanted to vote for the first African-American candidate for president because they were fed up. They were fed up, as white Americans, of being accused of being racists.

They were accused of being racists and bigots, and they were fed up with it. They are not racists, they’re not bigots, they’re not white supremacists, and they don’t know any white supremacists. So they thought the fastest way to disprove those allegations was for America to elect an African-American president. Most powerful job in the world. And that’s what happened. America, with the support of untold millions of white voters, elected the first African-American president.

And now we got eight years of Obama from 2009 to 2016. After those eight years, America’s race problems are arguably worse than ever, since the Civil War. Since the 1860s. Now, how can that be, folks? The first African-American president could not have been elected with black-only votes. The first African-American president needed millions of white votes, and he got them.

So these white voters, they didn’t care about policy, they didn’t care about anything other than showing that America isn’t racist by electing an African-American president. So after America has demonstrated that it has elected the first African-American president and that racism would not permit that, then how in hell can it be worse than it has since the 1800s?

Somebody needs to try to explain this to me. Because those white voters, they thought it would be the end of this. That’s why they did it. They thought it would be the end of racial strife. They were trying to end it. They were trying to show that there isn’t racism in America, not like the left has claimed. They’d already made Oprah Winfrey the most popular and wealthy television performer in America. There were countless African-American athletes that were among the wealthiest athletes in America.

And yet that didn’t matter. The charge still came that there was white supremacy, that there was white privilege, and that there was blatant racism everywhere. And so these voters said, “All right. We’ll elect the first African-American president. And they did. And after that, after that statement, after America going to that length to prove its not racist, look at what is being said about America today. That it is racist and it is bigoted, that there is white supremacy, that there is white privilege. And it’s worse than ever. We need reparations.

So how, folks, does all that happen? You know, it’s no small thing for a bunch of white people to band together to elect somebody on the basis of race so as to show that they’re not racist, that’s a big, big thing. And now it counts for nothing? Now it doesn’t mean anything? Now it’s almost as though it never happened. Now America is a worst racist nation than it’s ever been since the Civil War?


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