Same Old GOP Tune

While Project Lincoln- "racist, pure and simple"- is wrong, thee is probably even more wisdom in the tweet than even PSU Blaze himself realizes:

I don’t remember Senator Kennedy calling Melania “comrade”

— PSU Blaze (@PSU_Blaze) November 18, 2021

Saule Omarova is President Biden's nominee to be head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As noted here, "Originally from Kazakhstan, Omarova was educated in Moscow before coming to the United States in 1991 on a student exchange program in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison."

Kazakhstan is a small, sparsely populated nation in central Asia and was the last jurisdiction to declare its independence from the Soviet Union, in the same year that Omarova left to study in the USA.

Omarova earned a doctorate at Wisconsin and a law degree from Northwestern University, later serving as a senior advisor in the United States Treasury under Bush 43.  According to Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs chairperson Sherrod Brown, Omarova has "published dozens of works" pertaining to finance and "more than 70 financial regulatory experts from across the political spectrum, including bankers, have endorsed her nomination."

That, and Omarova's expertise as a staunch critic of concentration in the financial services industry, earned Senator Kennedy's cheap shot. He never did call Melania Trump "comrade," because she is the wife of the president to whom John Kennedy has pledged his allegiance. 

Bigotry is selective. Republicans even have their own black senator, South Carolina's Tim Scott, who vehemently opposes Omarova because, well, let Matthew Stoller explain:

I've read Omarova's work for about a decade. It's very clear that she is a foe of too big to fail banks, reckless bailouts, and speculative excess. The right, as usual, simply cannot see policy alignment when it's a Democrat making the case.

But she poses an even bigger threat than that for Republican donors.

Omarova is being opposed for just one reason. She understands banking.

The first tweet indicates why champagne corks were popped by the financial services industry when Bernie Sanders was eliminated in the stretch round for the Democratic presidential nomination. But it's why the bigger celebration probably occurred earlier when Elizabeth Warren was effectively eliminated in the race. And it leads us to factors aside from race or national background to the recognition that when push comes to shove, Republican legislators will always side with capital over consumer, with profits over people.

Share |