Sen. Rapert’s Remarks Make National Headlines (UPDATED)

State Senator Jason Rapert made national headlines twice this week. And that’s not a good thing.

First, his legislation essentially requiring women desiring to terminate a pregnancy have a 9-inch probe inserted into them to detect a fetal heartbeat passed the Senate and is now in the House awaiting passage. Various national media outlets are talking about this legislation for obvious reasons.

Second, explosive comments Rapert made at an April 2011 Tea Party rally surfaced on YouTube and national publication The Nation picked it up.

Unfortunately, The Nation only transcribed a brief portion of Rapert’s remarks, but when you take his comments in their entirety it’s actually much worse.

I transcribed more of Rapert’s remarks to show that, in context, they are even more extremist:

“It says blessed is the nation that’s God is the Lord.

I wonder sometimes when they invited all the Muslims to come into the White House and have them a Ramadan supper. When our president could not take the time to attend a national prayer breakfast, I wonder what he stands for?

What you do speaks so loudly that what you say I cannot hear.

I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!”

You can view Rapert’s remarks for yourself in the video at the bottom of this post.

First, how in the world did Linda Tyler completely miss this during her hotly contested campaign against Rapert last year? Did the firm hired by the DPA to conduct opposition research overlook this video or was there a political reason for not releasing it? Or was it actually used and I just missed it?

You remember The Three Stooges (Hubbard, Mauch & Faqua). If we had known of Rapert’s comments during the campaign, he could have joined the group as Shemp.

Secondly, in today’s political culture when it comes to race and other hot-button topics you have to read between the lines since it’s no longer acceptable for right-wing politicians to blatantly say what they really mean. Politicians have learned to speak in code so their close-minded supporters can read between the lines.

It’s easy to read between the lines of Rapert’s remarks and crack his code.

Here is what Rapert was really saying, in my opinion:

1) Obama would rather hang-out with God-less Muslims than God-fearing Christians

2) Muslims shouldn’t be in the White House and that includes that secretly Muslim president.

3) Today’s America is not the white America I grew up with and I don’t like it and you shouldn’t either.

4) Minorities are ruining this country and stickin’ it to you white folks.

5) Obama and his supporters don’t believe in God.

I’ve emailed Senator Rapert seeking clarification on his comments. If he responds, I’ll print his remarks in their entirety.

Rapert’s reprehensible rhetoric reveals his extremist views and lack of tolerance. That’s not what Arkansas needs in its leaders.

UPDATE: Jason Rapert appeared today on the Dave Elswick radio show in an attempt to explain away the controversy that has arisen from comments he made at a 2011 Tea Party rally.

Senator Showboat plays the role of martyr brilliantly.

He blamed a liberal publication, The Nation, for going after him because of his vaginal probe bill (he doesn’t call it that, mind you) and that this video has been on the web for almost two years and it didn’t come out until his supposed fetal heartbeat bill got traction. Basically, folks are out to get him, in his opinion.

In regard to how long the video was around, Rapert has a point, but only a slight one.

The video was on YouTube since April 2011 and for some mind-boggling reason his 2012 opponent either completely overlooked this clip or chose not to use it. With the recent news of Rapert’s vaginal probe bill receiving national headlines, The Nation probably took all of 1-minute to do a YouTube search and found the video.

Rapert used the classic defense of how his remarks were taken out of context. Rapert claims he was referring to political minority special interests and not minorities as an ethnic or demographic group. In Rapert’s defense, earlier in his long-winded speech, he did go after political minorities and in that context I didn’t infer he was referring to minorities, but people who support Obama who are indeed a minority in Arkansas.

However in the clip that’s been widely circulated, his words are not taken out of context and it’s a complete line of attack.

In the clip, he starts off on a riff attacking Obama for having Muslims over to the White House, but not attending the National Prayer Breakfast. In this instance, Rapert is either simply incorrect or lying since Obama has actually attended the National Prayer Breakfast every year he’s been president.

Oops.

Rapert was clearly talking about minorities in the classic sense in the clip. Also, earlier in the speech he questions Obama’s citizenship calling on him to releases his birth certificate. It sounds like Rapert had a case of birtherism fever at time.

Rapert is clearly connecting the dots for his audience when he talked about minorities, seconds after talking about Muslims and creating the impression he believes they are God-less.

On Elswick’s show today, Rapert went to another classic line of defense with the “some of my closest friends are black” and talked about friends of his that are black and how they’ve played an important part in his life both professionally and personally.

I don’t believe Rapert is a racist and I’ve not used that word when describing him. But he is an extremist, not as tolerant of others as a leader should be and a genius at playing the victim.

I do believe Rapert is a showboating charlatan who knows how to correctly use code words to get his audience fired up.

Senator Showboat would be an apt nickname.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVKS27fLN3k]