A Republican congressman is under fire for likening President Obama to a “tar baby.”
Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs used the racially charged term during an interview on a Denver radio station on Friday.
“Even if some people say, well, the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that, they will hold the president responsible,” Lamborn said Friday while discussing Obama’s budget policies.
“Now, I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know… you are stuck and you are part of the problem now, and you can’t get away,” he added.
While “tar baby” is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “something from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself,” it has long been recognized as a derogatory term for African Americans, originating in the “Uncle Remus” stories, supposedly told by an old black man.
Lamborn spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said in a written statement that the politician issued an apology to the Obama: “Lamborn was attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the president’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces.”
“He regrets that he chose the phrase ‘tar baby,’ rather than the word ‘quagmire.’ The congressman is confident that the president will accept his heartfelt apology.”
But it didn’t appease Lamborn’s critics.
Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP called Lamborn’s words “vitriolic,” according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
And Diana Allen-Philips, president of the Urban League in the area, said that you can’t “just toss that phrase out and not have it associated with the past. If Barack Obama was not African American, would he have used the same terminology?”
It’s not the first time lawmakers have taken heat for using the loaded term.
In 2007, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney referred to the controversial Big Dig construction site in Boston as a tar baby while seeking the GOP presidential nomination.
And in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also used the term while discussing divorces.
Both politicians apologized.
