Rush Limbaugh doesn't get "Race"

Fortunately, his lack of understanding mirrors those of his listeners, so it won't hurt him much.

Over the weekend he made some comments on the Powell nomination which have exposed his lack of understanding about race, and brought him a certain amount of fire.

Remember, the whole quote here, folks, the whole quote is, "I'm now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with." Now, just so you know, I haven't come up with any. I worked diligently on this on the airplane on the trip home from Green Bay yesterday. After I got home last night, I worked diligently. I can't find any of these inexperienced white liberals that Powell has endorsed. So they're all focusing you know it's race. This has hit a nerve. So what if it's race? Why is it so hard to admit that it's race? Ninety-five percent of black people are going to for Obama because he's black. What's so problematic about admitting this? I thought it should be about race. I thought you liberals thought this is a historic candidacy because finally we're going to elect a black guy to be president. Why hide behind this? Why act like it's not about race? What, you want to tell us it's about his policies?

See in Rush's mind there is no reason to vote for Obama other than his race, because Rush doesn't agree with his policies. This mirrors some comments he made about Powell and Condoleezza Rice back when they were being attacked. He couldn't understand how Liberals would attack black people, when we purport to love black people. He couldn't quite grasp how we might disagree with a black person, because we see him as a person who happens to be black.

There's something here that I can't quite get to - some intersection of Rush's reflexive views on race and his opinion that anybody honest and intelligent would be a conservative. Rush knows that if Powell were honest he would be supporting John McCain and Conservative (we'll take it as read that Rush thinks Powell is intelligent). So since he's not supporting McCain, there must be some corruption that is forcing him to support Obama. And given how Rush looks at Blacks, well, the corruption presents itself pretty much automatically.