Ilhan Omar Finally Gets Something Right: Calls Obama a 'Pretty Face' Who 'Got Away with Murder'
Rep. Ilhan Omar may be a loathsome anti-Semite who is able to get away with murder because her party is willing to stand behind her since she’s one of them, but at least she recognizes when other Democrats get the same treatment.
In an interview with Politico Magazine that appeared as the firestorm over her remarks implying that certain elements of American Jewry have dual loyalties, Rep. Omar criticized former President Obama for pursuing policies that the Democrats abhor and getting away with it because the party was willing to countenance it.
“By the time she ran for office in 2016, knocking off a 22-term incumbent to win a seat in the Minnesota statehouse, Omar was fed up — not so much with Trumpism, or with politics in general, as with the Democratic Party,” the article read.
“As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage,” it continued.
“Recalling the ‘caging of kids’ at the U.S.-Mexico border and the ‘droning of countries around the world’ on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.”
“We can’t be only upset with Trump,” Omar told Politico.
“His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” she continued.
“And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
The irony, I believe, was lost on Rep. Omar.
Whether it was lost on writer Tim Alberta, who spends a fair amount of time discussing the identity politics of Rep. Omar and her “mistakes” (particularly regarding members of the Jewish faith, in regard to Israel or not) is anyone’s guess, but I’d probably say no.
For starters, one could possibly detect a bit of dry humor in the parentheticals as Alberta recounted Omar’s numerous faux pas.
“First, Omar tweeted that Lindsey Graham had been ‘compromised,’ suggesting that his support for Trump — whom he’d verbally mauled throughout the 2016 campaign — owed to blackmail collected on the South Carolina senator. (Conservatives accused Omar of playing on the long-running, unsubstantiated insinuation that Graham is gay; she denied this, but apologized.),” he wrote.
“Then, after being seated on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar was lampooned for a 2012 tweet in which she wrote during an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, ‘Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’ (Omar later apologized and deleted the tweet; she claimed ignorance of the anti-Semitic trope that conceives of Jewish hypnosis.)
“Finally, in early February, after just over a month on the job, Omar made the jump from occasional agitator to permanent lightning rod. Arguing that U.S. lawmakers back Israel because of campaign donations from Jewish donors, the congresswoman tweeted, ‘It’s all about the Benjamins baby,’ a reference to $100 bills.”
Unfortunately for Alberta, this wasn’t quite so “finally” — this was before the dual loyalties remark. However, it’s an interesting study in what the Democrats are willing to forgive. Even though he claimed “(t)he entire House Democratic leadership denounced Omar, forcing yet another apology,” he doesn’t note any actual substantive action against Omar.
That’s because there wasn’t any. Nor was there this time. When leadership attempted to take substantive action by attempting to pass the mildest of resolutions condemning anti-Semitic tropes and implying — but not naming — Rep. Omar as the motivator behind said resolution, the substantive action turned into a meaningless anti-hate resolution instead, one that Omar didn’t seem all too displeased with:
Our nation is having a difficult conversation, but we believe this is great progress. pic.twitter.com/gSua9a8mki
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 7, 2019
And thus we circle back to Barack Obama. No, he isn’t an open anti-Semite, but he often did the same things his party is now howling mad that the Republicans are doing — and often worse, in the case of those “caged children” at the border — and got away with it because he was a Democrat.
It’s all about the party affiliation, baby. That’s why Ilhan Omar is still a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and her “punishment” consisted of a not-too-stern collective lecture and a hope that she’ll grow from these latest remarks. The same way that every time this has happened in the past few months, she has gotten the same “punishment” and everyone hoped for growth. There’s a definition of insanity I once heard that reminded me of that strategy somewhat.
Yet, here’s the kicker: This has the potential to anger as many people in the Democrat Party as her statements on the Jewish people, simply because she’s pointing out the truth about Barack Obama.
Perhaps Omar recognizes another individual who can get away with just about anything. Or perhaps she just recognizes the obvious.
Either way, her behavior may be horrible in general, but she’s not wrong in this particular circumstance.
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