Prejudiced Ex-Lawmaker Tom Tancredo Wins GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award for Calling Sotomayor Racist

Tom Tancredo

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Calling someone a racist is a pretty hefty charge. For example, BuzzFlash wouldn't make the assumption that just because a person wants everyone in the country to speak English exclusively doesn't mean he's racist.

To be sure, we're not the experts on racism that Tom Tancredo is. After spending his time on the campaign trail last year singing Dixie with a white supremacist organization that is defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, we'd guess Tancredo would know a racist when he sees one.

Tancredo's qualifications in this arena is why we paid special attention to his appearance on Ed Schultz' MSNBC show this week when he insisted that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Watch:

"I'm telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context, that's exactly how we would portray it, and there's no one that would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that, except for a Hispanic woman. And you're going to say it doesn't matter? Well, man, where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that?" Tancredo ranted.

Aside from the fact that the above statement by itself is bizarrely racist (only a Hispanic woman could get away with being a bigot in this country apparently), Tancredo and others refuse to say exactly what makes Sotomayor racist (but, for an excellent dissection of what Sotomayor said to get all these white men + Ann Coulter worked up, see this piece by Abby Ferber).

But, I guess being a racist is better than being a terrorist, which is what Tancredo would apparently call Sotomayor if she and her family had come to New York City from Mexico instead of Puerto Rico. Or, if not a terrorist, at least a serial rapist/murderer who deals drugs.

Considering how well Sotomayor did in school, Tancredo might even try and deport her. And God help her if she watches Univision programming.

Or maybe Tancredo would prefer that Obama name an illegal immigrant to the Supreme Court so that the country could save some money, much as the congressman did when he made improvements to his Colorado home.

To be fair, Tancredo's charge has been popping up everywhere since he made the assertion. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was even brave enough to make the accusation against Sotomayor from his Twitter account. Conservative members of the media have been parroting the line as well (there's a good mash-up of the conservative press' talking points on Sotomayer's racism at Media Matters).

Interestingly, Joe Scarborough of all people called out the GOP for their collective tin ear on his television show Morning Joe:

"I don't think this is the tack the new Republican Party wants to take," Scarborough said. "We're at the stage with the Republican Party where the ship is already going down and they're circling back around to hit the iceberg again. What's going on?"

Even though Tancredo's talking point has been repeated by desperate conservatives far and wide in an attempt to delay the inevitable, this award really belongs to the former congressman from Littleton, CO. Tancredo, with the richness of his experiences in being a prejudiced hypocrite, is perhaps the best judge of just who is a racist.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Tom Tancredo's second GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award. He also won December 14, 2007. You can see a list of all previous nominees here.

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