HUFFINGTON POST: Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson made the comment in response to Mitt Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu’s suggestion on Thursday that Powell’s endorsement of President Barack Obama’s re-election was motivated by race. Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff when the general was secretary of state during the first George W. Bush term, told Schultz that he respected Sununu “as a Republican, as a member of my party,” but did not “have any respect for the integrity of the position that [Sununu] seemed to codify.”
When asked by Schultz what, if anything, the remark said about the attitudes of the Republican Party, Wilkerson said:
“My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people — not all of them, but most of them — who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that’s despicable…” (more)
EDITOR: We have frequented the same barber shop in NE Pennsylvania for thirty years. Until Barack Obama was the Democrat nominee, sentiment was largely Democrat but debates would rage on. As soon as he became a candidate, discussion stopped. The prospect of a black man being or continuing to be President was not an issue for rational discussion but blind hatred. Anyone who doesn’t think that race is an important issue with a large portion of white males is out of touch. The polls show this; Lawrence Wilkerson has the guts to say it.
