Would the Democrats Please Stop The Race Baiting!

Those race-baiting Democrats are at it again. This time, the race baiting comes from some members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Perhaps, at this point, Examiner readers might take what I say next with a huge grain of salt. I'm not exactly unbiased when it comes to the group known as the CBC.

What do I think of the CBC? The truth is I try not to think about the CBC. I find that I'm a kinder, gentler, happier person when I don't think about the CBC. But what I do think of them can be summed up in one sentence: The late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell did more, single-handedly, than the CBC has ever done as a group.

That being said, I can now move on to Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind,, who recently said that members of the Tea Party movement would "love to see us [black Americans] as second-class citizens."

If you think Carson stopped there, then you don't know how low Democrats can stoop when they race bait. Believe me, it ain't a pretty sight.

"Some of them would love to see us hanging on a tree," Carson added.

So there it is: Members of the Tea Party movement would love nothing better than to see some black folks strung up from a tree, the way it was done in the bad ol' hang 'em high days in the South.

There's only one problem with Carson's comment. (OK, so there are about a couple of hundred things wrong with Carson's comment.) Carson is a Democrat. When blacks were left "hanging on trees" during the era when lynching was prevalent, the folks doing it were members of his party, not Republicans.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., obviously determined not to be outdone, went Carson one better. She didn't resort to race baiting, to her credit. Waters had this to say about members of the Tea Party movement: "As far as I'm concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell."

Where is Arizona Sheriff Clarence "Mr. Civility Cop Himself" Dupnik now that he's really needed? Earlier this year, Dupnik said that more civil political discourse was needed in this country.

Without it, Dupnik said, we get incidents like the one that resulted in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others being shot in Tucson.

What Dupnik really meant was this: You conservatives need to shut up, because you're hammering us liberal types with your arguments and your logic. But liberals and those on the left can be as uncivil as we please.

Leonard Pitts, my journalism colleague who writes a column for the Miami Herald, is cut from the Dupnik mold. He praised Waters for her "go to hell" comment, saying that Waters is a Democrat with a spine.

It's a pity that Pitts confuses petulance with backbone. What Waters needed was precisely what she didn't give us and apparently doesn't have: an argument.

The Tea Party movement was formed by people -- some of whom might be racists and/or bigots, but so are some Democrats -- who sincerely believe that government doesn't have carte blanche to raid taxpayers' wallets.

So far Democrats -- the "party of civility" in the world of Dupnik and Pitts -- haven't come up with an argument explaining why government, especially the federal government, does have carte blanche to raid taxpayers' wallets. Instead, Democrats simply assume that taxpayers' money and government money are one and the same thing.

That notion is wrong. No amount of race baiting or testy comments from Democrats can change that fact.

Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.