While Attorney General Eric Holder is on the verge of facing a contempt citation in Congress for allegedly not complying with a congressional subpoena over Operation Fast and Furious, in the long run the situation could be a political positive for President Barack Obama’s reelection effort, according to former Clinton adviser and Fox News analyst Dick Morris.
Morris, the co-author of the book “Screwed!: How Foreign Countries Are Ripping America Off and Plundering Our Economy — and How Our Leaders Help Them Do It,” explained his theory on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on the Fox News Channel on Saturday. He said that, despite Holder’s baggage, he is still viewed positively in the African-American community.
“I think [a contempt citation] certainly is not healthy for him,” Morris said. “But you got to realize that — I believe he is our first African-American attorney general. And I think he’s — an outspoken and forceful advocate for the minority community — motor voter and voter ID and a range of those issues. And I think that the problem is, if Obama forces him out or makes him resign in the face of all of this stuff, it is going to send a bad message to the black community. On the other hand, if Holder is sitting there as attorney general being persecuted in the eyes of many of the African-American community by the Republicans in Congress, he becomes the symbol of victimization and helpful to Obama because he would have generated turnout. It is probably in Obama’s interest to leave him right where he is, in contempt of Congress fighting the Republicans.”
Morris said that Holder’s standing in the black community would make it possible to advance the idea that the Republican Party has a racial agenda.
“I don’t think that it is it race, but I think they will spin it as race,” he said. “And what I think that it is is this was a stupid operation in the first place. It was — you could put guns in the hands of drug dealers, deliberately give them the guns and one guy who they actually arrested for it and then let him go because they wanted to track the weapons, that’s insane and led to deaths of several DEA agents as well as many, many other people. It was a terribly conceived and terribly executed and of course it is being covered up now. But I think that the sense of outrage about it will not prevent some people from saying that this is it a race-based thing.
