House Republican Calls Obama a Racist Because of Tanning Salon Tax

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Freshman Republican Rep. Ted Yoho is telling his constituents that President Obama is discriminating against white people because Obamacare contains a 10% tax on tanning salons.

Transcript courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

I had a little fun with [John] Boehner and told him about the sun tanning tax. He goes, ‘I didn’t know it was in there,’ and I said, ‘Yes, it’s a ten percent tax.’ He goes, ‘Well, that’s not that big of a deal.’ I said, ‘It’s a racist tax.’ He goes, ‘You know what, it is.’ I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin, with two non-dark skin people, and I asked this to him, I said, ‘Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’ and he goes, ‘No, no need.’ So therefore it’s a racist tax and I thought I might need to get to a sun tanning booth so I can come out and say I’ve been disenfranchised because I got taxed because of the color of my skin. As crazy as that sounds, that’s what the left does right. By God, if it works for them, it’ll work for us [inaudible].

Rep. Yoho’s statement about the tanning salon tax being racist is itself racist. What Yoho doesn’t understand is that people with darker skin go to tanning salons too. Tanning isn’t just for white folks. While calling Obama a racist, Yoho exposed his own ignorance and racism. Rep. Yoho also apparently doesn’t understand what the term disenfranchise means. To disenfranchise someone is to deprive them of their right to vote. A 10% tax on tanning salons does not disenfranchise him.

The fact that this buffoon feels comfortable asking dark skinned people if they have ever been in a tanning salon, then retelling a story about his racism to a town hall meeting full of his constituents says a lot. Yoho is a member of a majority that has voted 40 times to repeal or defund Obamacare, so this isn’t exactly a bright bunch that we have in charge of the House.

In fact, House Republicans are demonstrating that they are some of the dumbest people on the planet. Even worse, they wear their stupidity as a badge of honor. The dumber the candidate, the more likely they are to advance in Republican politics. (A prime example of this is the dumb as a board college drop out Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.) People like Rep. Ted Yoho are what happens when anti-intellectualism overruns a political party. There is nobody left in the Grand Old man’s Party to stop the idiots from advancing up the ladder.

Yoho’s remarks demonstrate that Republicans can’t get over the fact that our president is an African-American, and that the Republican Party is only capable of viewing the world through a prism of 1950s style Jim Crow racism.

When Republicans call Obama a racist, they are actually asserting their own racism.

Or in the case of Rep. Ted Yoho, a special degree of ignorant, stupid racism, that should be shamefully embarrassing to every American.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association