Clinton: If the GOP doesn't confirm Obama's SCOTUS nominee, they're racist

(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Senate Republicans' plan to save the new Supreme Court nomination for President Obama's successor stems from racism, Hillary Clinton claimed during a campaign speech in Harlem on Tuesday. She made the case that the GOP strategy is part of a broader right-wing, race-based opposition to Obama:

"Justice Scalia's passing means the court hangs in the balance," Clinton said. "Now the Republicans say they'll reject anyone President Obama nominates, no matter how qualified. Some are even saying he doesn't have the right to nominate anyone! As if somehow he's not the real president."That's in keeping with what we've heard all along, isn't it? Many Republicans talk in coded, racial language about takers and losers. They demonize President Obama and encourage the ugliest impulses of the paranoid fringe. This kind of hatred and bigotry has no place in our politics or our country." [Daily Beast]

Obama himself has taken a more measured approach to the political effects of being the first black president. "I have no doubt there are people who voted against me because of race... or didn't approve of my agenda because of race," he said in a recent interview. "I also suspect there are a bunch of people who are excited or voted for me because of the notion of the first African-American president... Those things cut both ways."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.