“We need to have our Rosa Parks moment,” House Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane said in Wednesday’s debate against a state-run health exchange, erroneously making the U.S. government the bad guy in America’s history of segregation.
In Crane’s telling, “One little lady got tired of the federal government telling her what to do.”
In fact, Parks defied the City Code of Montgomery, Ala., one of hundreds of “Jim Crow” segregation laws across the South. Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man on Dec. 1, 1955.
Crane, the No. 3 Republican leader in the House, is in his seventh year in office. If Congressman Raul Labrador runs for governor in 2014, Crane is considered a leading candidate to replace him.
“If I made a mistake I will own it,” Crane said after the House recessed for lunch Thursday. “She was part of the civil rights movement. I’m sorry if I misquoted that.”
Crane said the intent of his argument was clear — that Idaho needs to stand up to an onerous federal law. “The point I was trying to make is that she said she had had enough and decided to stand up. That’s where I’m at with the federal government.”
Parks’ arrest by Montgomery police is considered the spark that kindled the civil rights movement. The year-long Montgomery bus boycott that followed elevated a young Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence. The following year, the city’s segregation laws were struck down as unconstitutional, first by a U.S. District judge in Alabama and then by the U.S. Supreme Court. Later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 to address generations of discrimination against African Americans.
Parks, who would have turned 100 last month, is the first African-American woman to have a statue placed in the U.S. Capitol. The sculpture was unveiled last month by President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Here’s what Crane, R-Nampa, had to say in arguing that Idaho should take inspiration from Parks and refuse to cooperate with the U.S. Affordable Care Act:
“I remind the body that at one point, segregation was legal in the United States. But one little lady got tired of the federal government telling her what to do….I’ve reached that point, Mr. Speaker, that I’m tired of giving in to the federal government. Time and time again we give in to the federal government.
“And I think that maybe it’s time we say to the federal government — or we say as a body — we need to have our Rosa Parks moment. We need to push back against the federal government.”
“Possibly, it’s a Rosa Parks moment that we tell our state agencies (that under) the Idaho Health Care Freedom Act that we will not spend any money or any time of those employees or any resources of the state or anything in that capacity. Maybe we need to tell the federal government, ‘You know what? You can try to come into our state, set up a federal exchange, but our employees are not going to work with you, you’re not going to have that coordination and cooperation with the Department of Health and Welfare, Department of Insurance.’”
Crane said 25 other states that are defaulting to the federal government the operation of online health insurance marketplaces could see Idaho as a leader in the tradition of Parks. “Maybe they’re looking to states like Idaho to say, ‘Join us in that Rosa Parks moment,’ where we will stand up to the federal government and say under no conditions are we going to allow the federal government to be the bully in the room and push the states around.”
The state health exchange measure, House Bill 248, passed 41-29 and is headed to the Senate, where approval is expected. The Senate passed a similar measure last month, 23-12.
All I can say about this is almost all politicians – regardless of party – twist the truth on purpose, or via ignorance, to support their message. Crane is obviously no different. Also, if Crane grew up here, & went to school here, then his statements likely don’t say much about the education he received, either.
Don’t let yourself get diverted from what he was trying to say. Even if his analogy is slightly wrong, we still need to take a stand against total federal control. As far as concluding that he is “twisting the truth” just to support “his” message, let me assure you that there are many of us that consider it to be “our” message as well.
Don’t so obviously play ignorant. Look up metaphor. No wonder you work for McClatchy.
Sheeesh!!!! When Idaho’s legislature is in session, every day is an embarrassment for Idahoans.
The irony is rich with this one. It was the federal government that intervened and protected African-Americans from unjust state and local laws.
What is more sad, is that he likens decades of the disgusting mistreatment of an entire race, including hundreds of lynches to a state run health care exchange. Whenever a politician – lefty or righty compares things to events like the holocaust, slavery or segregation, I quickly lose a great deal of respect for that person’s reasoning abilities.
Yes the irony is rich and deep. And Crane’s statement that he misquoted is the deepest cavern. No misquote, just plain standard Idaho ignorance.
‘Slightly wrong?’ It’s a flat out lie; it’s not just “slightly wrong.”
Rosa Parks stood up to a racist system – apartheid-like. She had had ENOUGH of the racist system practiced daily by whites that kept her and millions of others repressed and disenfranchised.
“If I misquoted…I’ll own it.” Start by owning your own stupidity.
Really Popkey…..really you continue amaze idahoans with your coddling of the right wing political terrorists of the GOP in taterville.
This very radical conservative movement in Idaho consistently depends on there fake moral high ground and revisionist opinion based facts.
Every time these philistine men & women of Idaho’s radical right stick there head out of the parallel universe known as conservatism and are confronted with the reality of a real world life and facts, they condescendingly apologize that they are sorry we didn’t understand them……really….really……Popkey we have a clear pattern in Idaho. The GOP believe their revisionist parallel universe is real and you give them an avenue to mainstream their insanity without accountability.
Why don’t you ask them questions of history right there? Have him educate you about his world and tell you about Rosa Parks, don’t correct him and provide the opportunity to escape the crossover from the revisionist world to our real world existence.
You are not an educator your a journalist ask the questions. Give them the rope and let them hang themselves. That’s we’re you get the story, journalists don’t help correct those who they ask questions of, your not his press agent.
Let idahoans know that we are represented by these philistine men & women who permeate the state legislature and its dangerous to our reality to allow them to use there positions to intentional cloud reality for those low information idahoans.
A good education involves a search for the truth, facts, understanding and validation of what you say with evidence…. that’s the accepted professional standard across the world.
Come on Popkey your a much better journalist than you allow yourself to be in Idaho.
I appreciate Dan pointing this out. I heard that portion of the floor debate and thought it extremely odd that Rep. Crane would use this as an example of federal overreach, when precisely the opposite was at work here: an onerous local law that the feds later sought to redress and enforce, and rightfully so.
I wonder what Rosa Parks would think about the Affordable Care Act. Just a hunch but I don’t think she would have protested it. Maybe now Rep. Crane can also be brave by figuring out how poor people in Idaho can get better access to health care. Or how Idahoans can avoid going bankrupt in case if they end up getting cancer and losing their health insurance. Those a pretty serious issues that Idahoans are facing.
Stupid is as stupid does…
What’s the next step for the Obamamaniacs? pass a law making it illegal for state employees to implement the Affordable Care Act?
No, we did that already.
Methinks the elderberry fumes were strong that day.
It is republicans like this who are trying to rewrite the sordid history of the United States when it comes to white men in the states having been put in their place by the federal government and the then supreme court who let them know their jim crow laws were unconstitutional and struck them down allowing the Rosa Parks of the world to ride buses, eat at lunch counters, and yes have the same right to vote as everyone else does under the constitution. The real reason that republicans oppose President Obama has everything to do with the fact that he an African American is the head of the same Federal Government that put them in their places so many years ago which set the stage for him as an African American to be President. These white males have not forgot that the Kennedys and Johnsons, and the Warren Court rebuked them in favor of African Americans in those states so many years ago and this is why the are fighting the second civil war with President Obama just in a different form. The republicans strong support is mainly in the south and some western states and with such limited support they could never defeat President Obama in 2008 or this past election cycle. And to this day the republicans are still employing the southern strategy in terms of national elections and that strategy’s time has past.