At the NAACP’s annual convention, Attorney General Eric Holder stole the headlines with fiery rhetoric calling for the end of “stand your ground” laws. That’s a pity, if only because it distracted attention from the truly outrageous claim delivered at the same gathering by one of his fellow Obama cabinet members, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
During her moment at the podium, Sebelius implied that those now arguing against ObamaCare are the ideological heirs to the Jim Crow racists who opposed the Voting Rights Act in 1965:
“The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. ‘This won’t work,’ ‘slow down,’ ‘let’s wait’ — they say.”
Now, we appreciate, as does Secretary Sebelius, that it’s getting tougher to make the ObamaCare arguments on the merits. So the temptation to play the race card against opponents has to be strong. And Sebelius went on to tell the NAACP to fight for ObamaCare the way it fought for desegregation laws and anti-lynching legislation.
Not that it was a hard sell. At the national level, the NAACP already functions as an arm of the Democratic Party. And on this issue, some of its local groups may have a financial interest in spreading the word.
As the Sacramento Bee reported in May about California, dozens of the state’s community groups will get a cut of $30 million in federal dollars for “outreach” work to persuade people to promote ObamaCare. Recipients include the local NAACP.
All in all, an ugly performance by our health secretary: a racially demagogic appeal that she backs up with federal dollars.