The right plays the race card

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=49048

The right plays the race card
Posted: February 28, 2006
8:30 p.m. Eastern

© 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Last week, I skewered Democrat opportunists who have turned into tough-sounding profiling advocates to exploit the White House ports debacle.

Today, I must express bottomless disgust with those on the Right who have turned into mush-mouthed race-card players to shift blame away from President Bush for his miserable mishandling of the situation.

It's one thing for feckless grievance-mongers on the Left to accuse Americans genuinely concerned about national security of Islamophobia. It's quite another for the Right to sink to such a level in accusing all good-faith critics of demagoguery. Reasonable people can disagree on the process pitfalls and security implications of the deal. But the elite Right has simply lost its marbles:

Here's GOP strategist and Muslim voter outreach architect Grover Norquist in the Los Angeles Times dismissing critics of the deal: "The only whiners left by next week will be the registered bigots."

Conservative commentator Larry Kudlow: "This whole brouhaha surrounding the Bush administration's green-light to a United Arab Emirates company slated to manage six major U.S. ports has nothing to do with protecting homeland security. Allow me to give it its proper name: Islamophobia."

New York Times columnist David Brooks: "This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades. First seized by the radio hatemonger Michael Savage, it's been embraced by reactionaries of left and right, exploited by Empire State panderers, and enabled by a bipartisan horde of politicians who don't have the guts to stand in front of a xenophobic tsunami."

The UAE is our "friend," we are told, and to question that assertion, we are scolded, is to engage in reckless prejudice and life-threatening insult. Yes, well, some friends are more equal than others. To instinctively trust a longtime, stalwart Western democracy more than an Arab newcomer with a mixed record on combating terror, international crime and Islamic extremism is not "Islamophobia." It's self-preservationism in a time of war.

We are at war, aren't we?

President Bush himself is ultimately responsible for encouraging the race-card players, thanks to his stunning comment that "those who are questioning" the deal need to "step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

Yes, there are countless homegrown terrorists across England, where Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., the maritime company purchased by state-owned Dubai Ports World, operates. So what? So, now, a peaceful Western democracy that is infiltrated against its will by al-Qaida is on the same plane as an Arab federation whose ruling emiratis ran interference for Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11, which continued to be a logistical hub for al-Qaida for years after, which refuses to recognize the existence of Israel, bans our textbooks as "racist" because they point out Syria's state sponsorship of terrorism, and is boycotting Denmark over the Muhammad Cartoons?

Now, all the proselytizers who tell us to collect the dots and connect the dots want us to throw them all away lest we give offense?

Yes, the UAE has taken steps to cooperate in the War on Terror after the Sept. 11 attacks. Give them a pat on the back. But don't tell me that their actions over the past four years elevate them to the same level of partnership and trustworthiness as Great Britain.

That's offensive.

Perhaps Bush should consult with his own Justice Department, which understood the need for heightened scrutiny of Middle Eastern illegal aliens in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, and instituted temporary targeted fingerprinting and registration policies for Middle Eastern tourists, businessmen and students.

Bigots!

Perhaps he should ask his own Border Patrol, which is on heightened alert for illegal Middle Eastern border-crossers.

Bigots!

Perhaps he should ask his own FBI, which is zeroing in on mosques and Muslim charities instead of Lutheran churches and the March of Dimes in the domestic War on Terror.

Bigots!

(But don't bother asking Transportation Department Norm Mineta anything – well, other than "Why the heck are you still here, Normie?")

The sad lesson of Portgate: Scream "racism" loud enough, and people will blame the messengers and back down. By the Bush standard, we who put American security above Arab sensitivity are all bigots now.

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See some of neocon Grover's handiwork:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 440000.htm

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... p?ID=21491

Who's an Islamophobic Bigot?
By Michael Reagan
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 2, 2006

Michelle Malkin was right on when she wrote that the elite right “has simply lost its marbles.”

Like her, I am infuriated by that small coterie of Washington conservatives who have somehow got it into their heads that they are the sole arbiters of what is the proper position those of us on the right must adopt to be able to call ourselves conservatives. They promulgate the party line and we are all expected to fall in behind them.

This has been bothering me for some time, but lately they have really gotten under my skin with their suggestion that those conservatives who have serious doubts about the wisdom of the Dubai ports deal are motivated by bigotry. As far as they are concerned, we’re all a bunch of anti-Arab xenophobes whose questions about the deal are really our way of expressing our anti-Semitism because Arabs, after all, are Semites.

As Michelle Malkin noted in her column, Grover Norquist, one of the high priests of the Washington conservative elite, had the gall to tell the liberal Los Angeles Times that the “only whiners left by next week will be the registered bigots.”

Not to be outdone, Larry Kudlow observed, "This whole brouhaha surrounding the Bush administration's green-light to a United Arab Emirates company slated to manage six major U.S. ports has nothing to do with protecting homeland security. Allow me to give it its proper name: ‘Islamophobia.’ "

Even President Bush has weighed in on the xenophobic angle, suggesting "those who are questioning" the deal need to "step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a great British company."

All of this begs the only legitimate question that can be posed by this deal: is it in the interests of the security of the American people? If it is, the deal is acceptable. If it’s not, we ought to run away from it as if it were a case of bird flu.

Conservatives outside the beltway have yet to get a clear answer to that question, and we deserve more than the kind of scorn the inside-the-beltway elitists have used to describe us. We are not bigots, we are not ignorant clods, we are simply concerned citizens who seek assurances we have yet to get.

It seems to be an article of faith among the Washington conservative establishment that they possess superior wisdom that somehow elevates them above all others when it comes to deciding what constitutes conservativism. They see themselves set apart from those in red-state America who exist only to be led around by their betters.

They don’t grasp the inescapable fact that they are imitating the liberal blue-state elite who think that nobody outside of New York, Los Angeles or Boston has an opinion worth listening to. Only for them Washington is the seat of all conservative wisdom.

Every single one of this bunch is quick to claim the legacy of Ronald Reagan and to identify themselves with his beliefs, yet nobody had more contempt for the kind of elitist attitudes the inside-the-beltway crowd have adopted.

Ronald Reagan’s great article of faith was in the inherent goodness and wisdom of the American people. My father was a red-state conservative through and through who couldn’t wait to get out of Washington every chance he got and go do hard physical work on his ranch. He felt smothered by the intellectual fog that hangs over the nation’s capital, which is perfume to the elite.

All we are asking for is a full and complete explanation of the pros and cons about the port deal. After all, Homeland Security and the Coast Guard initially rebuffed the deal until they were brought in and made to understand it.

To be surprised that we have the same questions all these top people had ignores the fact that we are entitled to get the same information they got. How else can we make up our minds?

To be called Islamaphobes and xenophobes just because we ask for that information is outrageous. It’s just plain bigotry.