Maher mocks Republicans: Are they really against attacking Syria, or are they just ‘black-tracking’?

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story 

Bill Maher not only got a laugh out of Republican flip-flopping during President Barack Obama’s administration on Friday, but he shared a new word for it with his Real Time panelists.

“It should be in the dictionary: ‘Black-track,’” Maher explained, defining it as, “The act of changing one’s mind because President Obama has agreed with you. See also: ‘Pulling a one-hatey,’ or the ‘Kenyan boomerang.’”

That led Maher to ask the panel whether Republicans really are opposed to a U.S. attack against Syria, or is it just a case of “black-tracking,” which would be corrected the next time a white president is elected.

“The ‘black-tracking’ part I don’t know about,” former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele answered. “But I do know that there is — appropriately and rightly — that libertarian voice that has always been in the background like this that [is] now beginning to assert itself.”

Steele pointed out that there were also Republicans who grew disillusioned with Obama’s predecessor, George W. bush, in 2006 and 2007.

“I remember Ron Paul at debates, saying the kinds of things that I’m hearing out of mainstream Republicans now, and getting booed off the stage,” Maher noted.

The problem for the “mainstream Republicans,” Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi interjected, was that the party fell on its face after the 2008 election, forcing it to search for a new identity.

“The Ron Paul ideology was kind of there to be appropriated,” Taibbi argued, to which Steele reponded by saying that voice was always there, only to be “supplanted by a neo-con ideology.”

“That was the aberration, right?” Taibbi asked sarcastically.

But now, Steele continued, Republicans were more likely to examine the consequences of military actions.

“So you don’t think it has anything to do with Obama — ,” Maher said, not directly mentioning the president’s race.

“I don’t. To be honest, I don’t,” Steele answered. “There are some idiots who do apply to that.”

“I am one of those idiots,” Maher offered.

Watch the discussion, posted on YouTube on Friday by “CoffeeAndNews41,” below.