By Jeffrey Meyer
At MSNBC what’s worse than being a conservative member of Congress? Being a black Republican member of Congress.
That seemed to be the sentiment on February 18 when MSNBC host Craig Melvin asked former Obama official Anton Gunn whether or not Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) would “come with an asterisk” next to his name if he wins election to a full-term in the Senate this November.
At issue during the segment was the fact that South Carolina has not elected an African-American to statewide office since Reconstruction -- 142 years ago; Tim Scott was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to fill a vacancy in the Senate when Senator Jim DeMint (R) resigned to become the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Melvin, himself a Palmetto State native, began by asking Gunn why no African-American had been elected statewide in 142 years, which was the result of former Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ben Tillman who “oversaw the constitutional convention that transformed the state and snatched away voting rights and other political rights to African-Americans.”
On a side note, Gunn conveniently forget to mention that Tillman was in fact a Democrat.
The MSNBC host then hyped inflammatory comments made by South Carolina House minority leader Todd Rutherford (D) who said that regarding Tim Scott, “the color of his skin certainly is not representative of the way that he votes on the policies that he seems to side with.” After briefly reading Senator Scott’s condemnation of Mr. Rutherford’s comments, Melvin disgustingly asked Mr. Gunn “Would Senator Scott's election, would it come with an asterisk like Rutherford's suggesting or seems to be suggesting here?”
Would Mr. Melvin have asked Gunn the same question of Roland Burris, an African-American who was appointed to fill then-Senator Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate seat upon is election as president? Or does Melvin question the legitimacy of Scott’s Senate tenure because isn’t a Democrat? For his part, Gunn did push back on the notion that Scott should have an asterisk next to his name, but suggested that the Republican senator did not support policies that were favorable to African-Americans in the Palmetto State.
Such a shameful attack on a prominent African-American conservative shouldn’t be tolerated by the folks at MSNBC, and given that Mr. Scott is a Republican, liberals will have no problem disparaging his name, something that would never happen if he were a Democrat.
Video at link
Read more:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2014/02/18/msnbc-host-would-black-republican-tim-scott-s-election-come-asterisk#ixzz2tjiCQysU
