Condoleezza Rice Calls Democrats Use of Race Card in Midterm Elections 'Appalling;' Hopes Obama Got Message From Voters
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the use of the race card by Democrats in the recently concluded midterm elections "appalling" and said she hoped President Barack Obama got the message after Democrats were thoroughly thrashed at the polls Tuesday.
"I don't know what's in his mind but I have to say that I hope that what he plans to do is to take the message that the American people don't like the course that we're on and there has to be change," said Rice in an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Thursday.
"He's gonna have to work with Republicans not just to do the things that the president wants to do but to do the things in a bipartisan fashion that need to be done for the American people," she added.
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Discussing the Georgia Democratic Party's flyers that urged voters to prevent another shooting similar to that in Ferguson, Missouri, Rice called the decision "appalling."
"We are not race blind. Of course we still have racial tensions in this country. But the United States of America has made enormous progress in race relations and it is still the best place on Earth to be a minority," said Rice, who is now a professor at Stanford University.
"The idea that you would play such a card and try fearmongering among minorities just because you disagree with Republicans, that they are somehow all racists, I find it appalling. I find it insulting. And as a Republican black woman from the south, I would say to them, 'really?' Is that really the argument you're going to make in 2014?" she said.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who became the first black senator elected in the south since Reconstruction also raised concern about the damaging effects of race-baiting politics in an earlier Fox News interview.
"It's a little worse than it was several years ago," Scott said when asked about his views on race relations.
"Over the last couple of years what I've seen happening and it's unfortunately happening by our own peers. When I was a high school kid, I heard so often, you're just not black enough. I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean, but simply said, too many kids today are facing a choice of dumbing down in order to fit in. I would say to them, 'don't fit in' … too often our friends on the left use this issue of race as a calling card, not for the human condition but for political gain. This is a major problem in our country and it is creating a rift in our nation that is unnecessary," he added.
Rice agreed.
"What are we doing to our kids when we tell them that their ethnic identity has to make them unsuccessful? That to me is a really racist thing to say," she told Kilmeade.
She also warned President Obama against pursuing an executive order on immigration.
"We can't have a circumstance in which we are going after a problem as meddlesome and potentially divisive as immigration by executive action only," she said. "This has to go through the people's representatives."
