Cokie Roberts: ‘Some of This Tea Party Anger is Racist’

On Wednesday, the hosts and guests of Morning Joe tackled new polls which showed President Barack Obama suffering in public job approval polls. They noted that the Republican Party, too, is not popular with the public. Contributor NPR Cokie Roberts attributed at least some of Obama’s falling polls to the GOP’s animus towards him which, she said, is motivated in part by racism.

Digging into recent polling data and Hillary Clinton’s political prospects ahead of the 2016 presidential contest, Roberts dismissed some of the disapproval of Obama and said that it would disappear when the Democrats next ran a white candidate.

“I also think, you know, just calling it, that some of this tea party anger is racist,” she said, “and that having a non-black person on the ticket will diffuse it to some degree.”

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Joe Scarborough disagreed. He said that the anger directed at Bill Clinton in the 1990s in conservative circles was just as irrational as some of the anger directed at Obama.

Bloomberg columnist Al Hunt agreed with Roberts, saying that the

shift towards the GOP among Appalachian voters in the last 15 years is indicative of a latent racial animus. Furthermore, he said, the fact that Clinton could be competitive in a state like West Virginia is its own indictment.

“Having grown up in the Deep South I’m always aware of those words that are there that are just different when you’re talking about someone of a different race,” Roberts added.

Watch the segment below via MSNBC:

[Photo via screen grab ]

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