Something to keep in mind after reading Newt Gingrich’s defense of Mandela

In case you missed it, that defense is here. While Newt’s anti-apartheid history seems pretty legit, he still doesn’t get let off on the charge of hypocrisy, as this story from New Year’s Eve 2011 demonstrates.

Associated Press: Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich blasted the Justice Department for blocking a South Carolina voter identification law and suggested the Obama administration wants to “steal elections.”

During a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the former House speaker questioned why Attorney General Eric Holder is “so determined not to identify if people are not eligible to vote”

Gingrich went on to say that, “you have to ask, why is it that they are desperate to retain the ability to steal elections and I think that’s what it comes down to.”

The Justice Department recently rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo ID at polling places as discriminatory against minorities. Republicans argue stricter voter ID laws are needed to avert voter fraud.

Gingrich was the big beneficiary of voter fraud in 2012, not Obama. Hypocrisy abounds.

So yeah, Newt was a passionate defender of the rights of black people — so long as those black people were way the hell and gone over in South Africa. When it came to the rights and freedoms of people here at home… Well, you know, screw that.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Santorum capitalizes on Mandela’s death by comparing Obamacare to apartheid

Politico: As condolences and reflections followed the passing of Nelson Mandela, Rick Santorum linked the injustices the former South African president fought and Obamacare.

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that,” Santorum said Thursday on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Yeah, because making sure people don’t go bankrupt over a health emergency is exactly the same as a brutal system of racial oppression that made even the Jim Crow south look like a beacon of equality. If Mandela fought against apartheid, Santorum’s fighting against Obamacare, and Obamacare is just as bad as apartheid, then logic dictates that Rick Santorum is as towering a figure in the struggle for justice as Nelson Mandela.

Rick’s not trying to politicize the death of a great man to inflate his own importance at all. Is he?

But while we’re on the subject of racial equality, maybe Rick could tell us more about how the “blah people" are sucking up taxpayer dollars in the form of welfare. See, because he’s so much like Mandela and all…

Comment thread for Breitbart obit for Mandela devolves into racist hatefest pretty much immediately

From the comment thread to Nelson Mandela’s obit at Breitbart.com:

• Yawn
• One less commie in this world.
• Will his estate still get royalties for the use of his image on boxes of rice?
• Another One Bites The Dust !
• Prepare to see whites fawn all over this man for the next few days.
• Nelson Mandela: Communist, Terrorist, Liar …
• I heard he had the AIDS…
• This guy was more zero than hero. South Africa use to be an advanced society and is still the only country to have ever given up nuclear weapons. They have been taking the farms from the white s and now the country can’t even feed itself. You should see the pictures I have from SA. They aren’t pretty and we’ll have the same thing here very soon. People will be living behind barb wire, electric fences, and have weapons always at the ready.
• Fawning, whining and gnashing of teeth from “white guilters” in 3…2…1…
• The Prawn of District 9 have lost their greatest advocate.

There’s much more, but you get the idea. If these are the sort of people who celebrate your passing, then you’ve lived a very good life.