Southern senator: ‘My people’ dislike Obama because he is too ‘exotic

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

A southern senator said that his constituents disliked Barack Obama because the President seemed “exotic,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) told the editorial board of the Des Moines Register on Wednesday.

The comment from the unnamed senator came during a closed-door meeting about filibuster rules last month.

“And, not naming any names, but one senator got up from a Southern state and said, ‘You’ve got to understand that to my people down here, Obama seems like’ -– he thought for a second and he said -– ‘like he’s exotic,’” Harkin told the Des Moines Register.

“We kind of laughed at that –- what’s that mean? Exotic? That he’s just exotic, that he doesn’t share our values and that kind of thing. It was kind of a strange comment.”

Many conservatives falsely believe Obama was not born in the United States and not a Christian. A Public Policy Polling survey from 2011 found slightly over half of Republican primary voters believed Obama was born outside the United States. The Pew Research Center found last year that 34 percent of conservative Republicans believed was a Muslim.

“Do they still think he’s a Muslim or wasn’t born in this country? Do they still spout those kinds of theories?” Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu asked.

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. He never explained it. Everybody just kind of laughed at the idea of exotic,” Harkin replied.

Key Dem: The Public Option Will Be 'Revisited'

By Sam Stein

One of the public option's strongest Congressional supporters insisted on Monday that while the Senate is poised to pass health care legislation that does not offer consumers a government-run insurance plan, he will bring the idea up again -- most likely after that bill is passed.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told reporters that the public option is not dead. "It will be revisited," he said. "I'm just saying, I believe it is so vital and so important that it is going to be revisited. Believe me." The Iowa Democrat said that "even next year," senators "may be doing some things to modify, to fix, to compliment what we've passed here."

The idea of pushing for the public plan as a stand-alone piece of legislation sometime down the road has been championed by other supporters of the provision.

Harkin did not blame the White House for the absence of a public plan in the Senate's bill, as his colleague, Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) did in a statement on Sunday night.

Also unlike Feingold, he hinted that he was giving up for now. Asked whether he would consider reinserting the public option into the legislation during the conference committee set to commence between the House and the Senate, Harkin replied: "I didn't say that. I said it would be revisited."

Acknowledging that, philosophically, he favors components of the House's version over some in the Senate's, he nevertheless said that when he goes to conference committee it will be as an advocate for his chamber's product.

"I always say when we go to conference we are going to stick with the Senate side," Harkin said. "Look, I'm a conferee, I have to fight for the Senate and I will fight for the senate but we will have to make compromises with the House."

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), likewise, insisted on Sunday that the conference committee would have to produce legislation that mirrored the Senate's or risk losing key conservative Democratic support. Asked about this process on Monday, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) kept mum.

"We have to pass this bill in the Senate first and we will worry about the next steps at a later time," he said.

M.C.L. comment: Using the theme I talked about last week, I'm not a big fan of this bill and there's ton of blame to go around but I place the blame on the blue dogs and CONservative Democrats for the way things turn out.. Democrats, middle of the road folks and Liberals should focus their anger to replace those conservative Democrats with those who share our values because this idea of "F this we're staying home" or "F this we're voting Green" doesn't help anyone but the Republicans. And if the Republican get even a toe hold back into power we can forget about progress all together.