Joe Wilson Must Be a Racist

Sometime next week the Democrats in the House will censure Rep. Joe Wilson with a Resolution unless he publicly apologizes on the House floor for calling Obama a liar last week.

Wilson immediately apologized to Obama who has accepted the apology; the Speaker has even said that everyone needs to move back to the debate on health care. This is apparently not good enough for some, however, and Pelosi's spokesman Brendan Daly said, “He has until next week sometime to apologize and if he doesn’t do it, they’ll go ahead and do a resolution.”

The lesson in this story, it seems, is the continuing double standard between parties in politics. The videos of bad behavior from the Democrats during Bush's speeches have circulated widely this week. Nobody demanded an apology then. Harry Reid called Bush a liar in 2004. Nobody censured Reid or demanded an apology. Apparently the difference is that Reid didn't do it on the House floor.

I'm not defending Wilson's breach of decorum. There were better ways to prove Obama's lies than to shout out from the floor during his speech.

Wilson's frustration with Obama's persistent "misrepresentations" of what is in the bill is shared by many of us. I believe Obama would have a better chance passing this bureaucratic nightmare of a bill if he'd at least tell the truth about it. It's a bad bill, but that's another issue at the moment.

Maureen Dowd doesn't see any problem with the bill, it seems, or with the lies. She doesn't think Obama was lying. She thinks Wilson disagreed with Obama just because Obama is a black man. For a party that purports a desire to move beyond race, it seems the left is the party constantly bringing it up. She writes, "But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted 'liar' at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

It's the old "shoot the messenger" theory, I guess. Wilson pointed out that Obama was lying when he said illegals would not be covered, so he must be punished. He must be a racist because he disagrees with Obama.

Dowd even takes shots at the South in her column today, "For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both." Stereotype much, Maureen?

Of course, as we all know, Wilson was correct in his belief that illegals would be able to obtain coverage because as many of us have been pointing out for months, there is no mechanism in place to stop them.

At any rate, in the end, Wilson was wrong for shouting from the floor; he apologized to Obama; Obama accepted the apology. Committees began work this week to try to close the loophole in the bill regarding illegals. Move on.

(H/T: Memeorandum)