Cruz Challenger O'Rourke Can't Answer His DWI Question, Babbles About White Privilege Instead
Second chances aren’t necessarily a bad thing, particularly if the transgression is minor and the transgressor is genuinely contrite.
In the case of Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s 1998 DWI, the incident in question isn’t exactly minor, but certainly not unrecoverable. It took place 20 years in the past, giving the Democrats’ Texas senatorial candidate plenty of time to change himself and become a better person.
However, what O’Rourke seems to have learned in the interim was how to make his own failings an example of “white privilege” in the United States — and point it out for his own political benefit. So much for that second chance.
In a televised debate against Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday, O’Rourke — the representative for Texas’ 16th Congressional District — babbled on about his DWI arrest when asked about it by moderators.
“I can only tell you that I was able to have a second chance in my life, was able to start a small business with good friends in El Paso, was able to meet (his wife) Amy on a blind date before Tinder,” O’Rourke quipped.
“I’ve made the most that I could with my second chance and my opportunity,” he added.
And then he got to the privilege bomb: “What I do know is that as a white man in this country, there is a privilege that I enjoy that many African-American men and women do not.”
Check out the video on Breitbart News here.
Beto jumps at the chance to play the race card in an attempt to make his ability to resume life after his DUI all about white privilege. He's so slick he's slimy. @tedcruz https://t.co/8kTe6oGGmw
— Michael J. Fell (@MichaelJFell) September 22, 2018
He said the fact that he was able to have the charges dismissed after going through a court-ordered diversion program spurred him to embrace criminal justice reform.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, and if my experience can contribute to an understanding that allows me to work with Republicans and Democrats alike on real and meaningful criminal justice reform to ensure that everyone is able to live to their full potential and no one’s mistake defines them for the rest of their lives,” O’Rourke said.
“That would be something good — something good in whatever meaningful way it is — that has come out of that terrible decision on my part.”
Sigh.
O’Rourke has made it clear in the past month or so that he’s going to plant his flag on the issue of the justice system treating persons of color differently than Caucasians. Whether or not this is factual is somewhat unimportant in O’Rourke’s case, however, when you consider how much vulgarization he’s injected into a complex issue.
Take his reason why he stands behinds NFL national anthem protesters: “Peaceful, nonviolent protests, including taking a knee at a football game to point out that black men, unarmed, black teenagers, unarmed and black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability, and without justice.”
Or, on why police are the new segregationists: “That system of suspending somebody, solely based on the color of their skin, searching that person solely based on the color of their skin, stopping that person solely based on the color of their skin, shooting that person solely based on the color of their skin, throwing the book at that person and letting them rot behind bars solely based on the color of their skin, is why some have called this — I think it is an apt description — the new Jim Crow.”
Well, all right. I’ll leave behind what I pointed out when we covered both of these prior instances of race-baiting — that the disproportionality thesis of racist policing is verifiably untrue in the form O’Rourke is presenting it, and far more complex than most of those who put it forward are willing to admit.
In both of these cases, at least, the point was tenuously involved with the issue at hand. Here, it’s merely a ceterum censeo — it has literally nothing to do with the fact that, 20 years ago, Beto O’Rourke got behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated. It’s almost reflexive at this point.
Taxes? The economy? Immigration? For O’Rourke, at this point in the campaign, all these roads lead back to white privilege.
The fact that O’Rourke is even within striking distance of Sen. Cruz should worry a great many of us who believe our lawmakers ought to provide solutions as opposed to rhetoric.
Let’s hope this revealing answer, in which O’Rourke can’t really talk about his DWI, but can wax philosophical about the racism he perceives in America, is finally the fuel Cruz’s campaign needs to pull away from the left’s latest privilege-pusher.
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