CHAMPAIGN – Former President Barack Obama unleashed pent up frustrations about the current president's policies, behavior and temperament Friday while accepting an ethics award at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
With the 2018 election weeks away, Obama urged the U of I students to passionately engage in political activism because "our democracy depends upon it."
"You can be the generation that at a critical moment stood up and reminded us just how precious this experiment in democracy really is, just how powerful it can be when we fight for it, when we believe in it," he said.
But all his comments were not so altruistic. He criticized the Republican Party, saying "the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican party," Obama said.
He pointed to the party as embracing conspiracy theories like the legitimacy of his birth certificate, doing what it could to limit voting rights and rejecting science and the resulting climate change.
"I don't mean to pretend I'm channelling Abraham Lincoln now, but that's not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican party," Obama said. "It's not conservative. It sure isn't normal. It's radical."
Seated on the front row as Obama criticized was former Governor Jim Edgar and Republican Congressman for Champaign's 13th CD Rodney Davis.
He said America's "fear of progress" didn't start with Donald Trump. He's a symptom of the nation's hesitation to embrace Democrat political ideals.
"It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause," Obama said. "He's just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, a fear and anger that's rooted in our past but it's also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes."
In a state whose Democrat leadership embraces Obama's ideals and is on the brink of financial disaster, social decline and political cynical depths, the audience enthusiastically cheered and applauded Obama's comments.
Jim Edgar and Rodney Davis ought to be ashamed of themselves. Jim Edgar is an example of why, in this state, I do not consider myself a Republican.
Your last paragraph is extraordinarily interesting. Barack Obama was not from the state of Jim Edgar, Barack Obama was not born in the state of Jim Edgar and Barack Obama had no relatives in the state of Jim Edgar, but Barack Obama picked the state of Jim Edgar to move to and run for office from. What the heck does that say about the state of Jim Edgar?
Most of the negative statements Obama made in this harangue applies more to the DEMOCRAT Party.
I believe this technique is called “Projection,” is it not?
Thank you, Barry, for reminding us of what a failure you along with the rest of the Democrats were. The Face of Failure.
As for Edgar, let it not be forgotten that he arranged with Madigan the back loading of pensions to make it appear his budgets were balanced. Future generations will pay the price.
Giving Obumba an ethics awards is the same as giving a pyromaniac a fire prevention award.
The Demoncrats may have had assistance in fooling normal people by the use of witchcraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orNpH6iyokI
Two former GOP state senators (who WERE accountants) told me years ago, when Edgar was governor, they approached him with a plan for a truly balanced budget, and he rejected it.
Edgar claimed that “borrowing against future revenues is the ONLY way it works in Illinois.”
Now we see the disasterous results.
How can they give a man who is NOT a natural born citizen and therefore ineligible to be President of the United States a govt ethics award.
Just like the nobel peace prize the Obamanation received, he is undeserving of this ethics award.
In Obama’ speech he called Benghazi a wild conspiracy theory?? Kris Paronto, a survivor of the Benghazi attack called Obama a narcissistic liar.
They actually had an assembly to PRESENT Obama with an “ethics award?”
Heck, I thought he got it from the same place where he found his Nobel Prize….the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack.