Don’t be surprised if we find ourselves at another LePage Hoedown this week. And don’t worry if you can’t dance, the steps are simple:
1. Paul LePage sticks his foot in his mouth;
2. In the ensuing firestorm, everyone from Rachel Maddow to Samantha Bee takes a swipe at the hapless governor — Republican lawmakers decline to comment;
3. A petulant LePage holds a press conference to clarify his remarks while chastising the media;
4. Repeat in six months.
Like all LePage Hoedowns, this most recent debacle was easily avoidable, yet seemingly inevitable.
LePage speaking to WVOM Tuesday, LePage went after Democratic U.S. Rep. John Lewis — a civil rights leader who is refusing to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday. You see, Lewis has the gall to do to Trump what Trump spent years doing to Barack Obama: Question the President-elect’s legitimacy.
“I will just say this: John Lewis ought to look at history,” LePage said, seeming to lecture a black man whose skull was fractured while leading the march in Selma, Alabama. “It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”
“Paul LePage is going to give John Lewis a tutorial on the history of black oppression in the United States? That’s rich,” Colby professor Dan Shea told the Associated Press. (Shea also notes that Jim Crow, which predates Grant’s administration, was ushered in with the electoral deal that put Hayes in office.)
LePage and Trump, equally thin skinned, pride themselves on their shoot-from-the-hip rhetoric. “Donald Trump is blunt, he comes out and says it the way it is and that’s why he got elected,” LePage said. “Chellie Pingree, Angus King … we’re sick of these silver-tongued people.”
Bluntness does not equal accuracy, nor does it automatically equate honesty. Silver tongue or no, Rep. Pingree and Sen. King at least give a modicum or more of thought before they speak.
Words matter. That’s a lesson LePage should have learned last year after being rebuked for an obscene tirade against a Westbrook legislator. Despite having caused a national embarrassment, no one was surprised when LePage declined to resign.
Now, LePage suggests Pingree resign for refusing to attend Trump’s inauguration.
Governor, we don’t live in an aristocracy, theocracy or any other-ocracy that makes requires us to pay homage to our leaders. Pingree and Lewis are well within their rights to skip the inauguration as a matter of free speech. As a self-described “avid reader of the Constitution,” you ought to know that.
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