Rangel: Obama remarks 'absolutely stupid'
by Christi Parsons
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared a truce in their recent war of words last night, but an important Clinton ally was still actively engaged last night.
Rep. Charles B. Rangel said in a CNN interview that Obama was "absolutely stupid" in his part of the exchange over the relative influence of Rev. Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson in passing civil rights legislation.
"How race got into this thing is because Obama said 'race,'" Rangel said in an interview. "But there is nothing that Hillary Clinton has said that baffles me."
Clinton and Obama yesterday were trying to de-escalate the conflict, which began when Clinton said that King needed the help of a strong president, Lyndon Johnson, to get legislation passed. Some leaders complained she was giving Johnson more credit for civil rights progress than King, and Obama said her remarks were baffling.
Even as the two candidates were calling for an end to the back-and-forth yesterday, Rangel was criticizing Obama publicly.
"I would challenge anybody to belittle the contribution that Dr. King has made to the world, to our country, to civil rights, and the Voting Rights Act,” said Rangel. “But for him to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid. It's absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law."
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/01/rangel_obama_remarks_absolutel.html
by Christi Parsons
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared a truce in their recent war of words last night, but an important Clinton ally was still actively engaged last night.
Rep. Charles B. Rangel said in a CNN interview that Obama was "absolutely stupid" in his part of the exchange over the relative influence of Rev. Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson in passing civil rights legislation.
"How race got into this thing is because Obama said 'race,'" Rangel said in an interview. "But there is nothing that Hillary Clinton has said that baffles me."
Clinton and Obama yesterday were trying to de-escalate the conflict, which began when Clinton said that King needed the help of a strong president, Lyndon Johnson, to get legislation passed. Some leaders complained she was giving Johnson more credit for civil rights progress than King, and Obama said her remarks were baffling.
Even as the two candidates were calling for an end to the back-and-forth yesterday, Rangel was criticizing Obama publicly.
"I would challenge anybody to belittle the contribution that Dr. King has made to the world, to our country, to civil rights, and the Voting Rights Act,” said Rangel. “But for him to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid. It's absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law."
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/01/rangel_obama_remarks_absolutel.html