Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy wonders if the "Negro" was better off as a slave picking cotton.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

For now, Mr. Bundy appears to have won, forcing the government to back down after its rangers were met with armed Bundy supporters this month. 

“The gather is now over,” said Craig Leff, a deputy assistant director with the Bureau of Land Management. “Our focus is pursuing this matter administratively and judicially.” 

But if the federal government has moved on, Mr. Bundy — a father of 14 and a registered Republican — has not. 

He said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and his views on race. 

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do. 

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Well what do you know?  The anti-government scofflaw is a racist.

Whoda thunk it? (Me, me, I thunk it.)

Well this is certainly going to complicate things for those politicians who spoke out in support of this moron isn't it?

Yep.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The remarks brought about a quick rebuke from Chandler Smith, a spokesperson for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). Heller had previously called Bundy and his supporters “patriots” for their actions and challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) description of them as “domestic terrorists.” 

Smith told the Times that Heller “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.” 

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas. 

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

Well it looks like this thing might have played itself out.

Unless of course the majority of his supporters are just as racist as he is.

Uh oh.