RUSH: Colin Powell, State of the Union Sunday, July 5th, on CNN, John King: “Let me ask you first if you know Judge Sotomayor.”POWELL:  No, I do not.  She seems like a very gifted and accomplished woman.  She certainly has an open and liberal bent of mind, but that’s not disqualifying.  But she seems to have a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law and so I hope we do have a spirited set of hearings.

What we can’t continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor who is announced and based on one simple tricky, but nonetheless case that the Supreme Court has now decided, have her called a racist or reverse racist and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we are mad at her.

RUSH:  Do you understand, he’s just — (interruption) Well, I know he’s shameless, James, but he’s got me on the brain.  I mean who else called her a racist and reverse — Newt called her a racist, and he pulled it back.  I called her a racist and bigot and stuck with it, and a reverse racist.  Balanced?  Sotomayor is a balanced?  She’s overturned all the time.  The only people overturned more than Sotomayor is the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals in San Francisco.  What else did he say?  She certainly has an open and liberal bent of mind, but that’s not disqualifying.  She seems to have a judicial record, balanced, tries to follow the law.  Tries.  Tries.  Hey, hey, hey, she’s trying out there. Let’s put her on the place where nobody can overrule her, nobody can overrule this woman once she gets there.  We’re stuck with her.  The poor woman denied the classics at Cardinal Spellman High School.  Based on one simple tricky but nonetheless case at the Supreme Court — wasn’t anything tricky about it.  He’s talking about the Ricci firefighter case.  Have her called a racist.  That’s not why.  We called her a racist because she said that she hoped a white Latina would have a far richer experience your average white guy.

I’ll tell you what, let me try this.  You know, I would be a better secretary of defense and a better secretary of state because I’m a white guy and I have a better understanding of the history of this country and national defense than Colin Powell.  You think I’d be called a racist?  Yes I would.  I would be called a racist if I had said that, and I would be if I’d said I’m better than Colin Powell because I’m white and he’s black?  I’d be called a racist.  So why does she get a pass?  She said she’s better ’cause she’s Latina.  The average white guy.  Words mean things, folks.  I know that political correctness requires us to be balanced and to dance around these things so that we could appear to be moderate and of even temperament and so forth.

Well, let’s move on.  Another sound bite from General Secretary Powell, John King: “You wrote in your book some time ago, ‘Never in the two years I worked with Ronald Reagan and George Bush did I detect the slightest trace of racial prejudice in their behavior. They led a party, however, whose principal message to black Americans seemed to be lift yourself up by your bootstraps,” as General Powell did, by the way, until he met Reagan who then pulled Powell up by his bootstraps.  “Some did not have boots, which is why they couldn’t pull themselves up by boot straps. I wish that Reagan and Bush had shown more sensitivity on this point.”  Okay, so here’s Colin Powell going after the two people that elevated him to the highest position in his life.  I wish that Reagan and Bush had shown more sensitivity on this point.  Let’s fast forward to where we are today.  Does the Republican Party have that sensitivity you wish it had now?

POWELL:  When you have nonelected officials such as we have in our party —RUSH:  Limbaugh.POWELL:  — who immediately shout racism or somebody who is quite prominent in the media says that the only basis upon which I could possibly have supported Obama was because he was black and I was black, even though I laid out my judgment on the candidates, then we still have a problem.KING:  The guy who used the term reverse racism, that’s Rush Limbaugh, and he has said some not so favorable things about you.POWELL:  Mr. Limbow [sic], of course, is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not on any membership committee, he doesn’t decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is.  So we’ve had this running debate, let’s call it that, and he’s entitled to his opinion and I’m entitled to mine.RUSH:  Well, I as Mr. Limbow, as Mr. Limbow, I’m not deciding who or what Colin Powell is.  He is.  I’m merely observing.  Now, he laid out his judgment on the candidates.  I guess we then have to ask — I don’t think John King did, I didn’t see the show.  I was already on the vacation trip.  But had I, Rush Limbow, been the host, I would have said, “Well, what is it about Obama’s policies that you now staunchly support?  Are you in favor of the stimulus leading us to nine-and-a-half percent unemployment?  Do you agree with President Obama, General Powell, when he apologizes for this country on every international trip?  Do you believe, General Powell, that we need to have a single payer national health care system?  Do you believe, General Powell, that the United States government should own automobile companies?”Colin Powell was a Republican, is a Republican.  John McCain was the ideal Colin Powell candidate.  And yet he endorsed — not just endorsed, but strategically announced the endorsement at a time of Obama designed to inflict the most harm on the candidate of his own party.  Why this?  So I said I think he feels he’d face a lot of heat if, as a black man, he didn’t support the first black candidate for president of the United States.  Race, I don’t know what else it could be.  I guess I’m going to get in more trouble here.