For those people who would not want to believe that a US Congressman could be using this type of language, I’m sorry to say that unfortunately there is audio evidence. He is actually quoted in this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/doug-lamborn-colorado-con_n_915382.html?ir=Politics&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009&ref=fb&src=sp as saying the following on a Colorado radio show.
Even if some people say, ‘Well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you’re a part of the problem now and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people.
This quote is problematic for SEVERAL reasons, and only the first is the ‘tar baby’ reference. Admittedly, using the term ‘tar baby’ is very descriptive of being in a “sticky” situation, but it also has very racist overtones. This is a term that Mitt Romney APOLOGIZED for using in 2006 – well before our nation elected its first African-American president. In 1981, author Toni Morrison published a novel titled ``Tar Baby," and she has compared the expression to other racial epithets. She says it's a term that white people used to refer to black children, especially black girls. Whether your politics are as Liberal as Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) are portrayed as or as proudly Conservative as Doug Lamborn’s (R-CO) there is no cause for this type of language.
The other, and perhaps more important, reason for this being a problematic quote is Rep. Lamborn’s certainty that the American people would automatically blame the President of the United States for having to deal with SOME members of BOTH the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate simply refusing to consider compromise solutions even though there have been people who have likened the way business is coming to be done in our nation’s capital to “political hostage taking”.
Apparently, Mr. Lamborn has forgotten what happened in the 1990’s when something similar seemed to be going on. The party that was refusing to compromise lost more seats AFTER it became clear that they would not compromise than they had gained BEFORE that happened. The famous “Contract with America” that was proposed by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich bears a remarkable resemblance to what many politicians promised their constituents in the 2010 elections. It was the backlash from this that lead to a large number of United States House of Representatives members losing their seats.
The Contract with America is rooted in 3 core principles:
Accountability: The government is too big and spends too much, and Congress and unelected bureaucrats have become so entrenched to be unresponsive to the public they are supposed to serve. The GOP contract restores accountability to government.
Responsibility: Bigger government and more federal programs usurp personal responsibility from families and individuals. The GOP contract restores a proper balance between government and personal responsibility.
Opportunity: The American Dream is out of the reach of too many families because of burdensome government regulations and harsh tax laws. The GOP contract restores the American dream.
If you read the actual text of the beginning of The Contract with America you will see that it bears a striking resemblance to the STATED goals of the modern Tea Party movement and the “Contract FROM America” as stated at http://www.thecontract.org/ . I think that Rep. Lamborn, as well as others, needs to remember the following two quotes from the philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana:
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." and "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."http://digitas.harvard.edu/~salient/issues/941212/page4.html (The text of the “Contract with America)
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