MSNBC "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

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OLBERMANN: Let"s turn to Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Congressman, thank you for your time tonight.

REP. KEITH ELLISON (D), MINNESOTA: Pleased to be here, Keith. How are you?

OLBERMANN: Disturbed. I guess that"s a good word for it.

ELLISON: Yes.

OLBERMANN: Mr. Fleming of the House says our choice is between a society that is officially godless, or being a Christian nation. Isn"t that a choice that we made already a couple of hundred years ago, or am I misreading documents?
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ELLISON: Well, I"ll tell you, I think that Thomas Jefferson would be shocked to hear that"s the choice in front of us. I think we have a choice between religious freedom or religious intolerance. And unfortunately, Mr. Fleming is choosing intolerance.

You know, it"s so important--I mean, look, they have created a social, political cultural environment where somebody thinks it"s a good idea to attack a person with a knife because they"re Muslim. You know, political rhetoric has consequences. And I believe that we are--they are lighting the match on a very dangerous set of circumstances, one of which we just heard about.

OLBERMANN: The Southern strategy that we talked about, the Mehlman strategy, the anti-immigrant strategy, anti-Hispanic strategy from earlier this year, now, anti-Muslim.

ELLISON: Oh, yes.

OLBERMANN: What--what is this?

ELLISON: Well, this is distraction and diversion. I mean, it"s true

it"s true agitation of people"s hatred. But really, it"s because--you know, they have a failed economic program and they don"t want people to look at it. So, what they do is they appeal to people"s worse most base instincts, which is to hate the other.

And this is something that you correctly pointed is tried and unfortunately true. But, you know, you remember, Reagan was talking about welfare queens. And now - and then we went on to Willie Horton. And then we went on to--I mean, just the--just the divisive thing that they come up with a new one every single election.

And when the vast majority of Americans wake up to this and reach out to each other and not on each other, then they will not be able to pull it.

OLBERMANN: Is that the only solution of this? Because it does seem that this pattern is repeating, just with a different "fill in the blank" here. I mean, if Republicans swap out a different group to target every year, why haven"t Democrats figured out a way to beat it every year?
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ELLISON: Well, because I think we have too many Democrats who operate on the basis of fear. You know, if we would just stand up and say, look, you know, we have a First Amendment and a heritage of religious tolerance that we are proud of and we are not going to back off of that, we would win. That would be winning election strategy. It would be good policy and good politics.

But so often, they catch up by surprise and we end up trying to triangulate and capitulating. And it"s just a sad thing. I ask Democrats, progressives, liberals, to stand up and be proud of our Constitution and be proud of our heritage of equality, liberty. And because if we don"t stand up for these ideals, the people that want to divide us and whip up hate and division--they will be active and, unfortunately, they may be successful.

OLBERMANN: Where we started this segment, Congressman, with Ken Mehlman, not so much his personal revelations but his revelations about what was strategitized in terms of putting this anti-gay measures--

ELLISON: Yes.

OLBERMANN: -- on the ballots in "04 and "06 to bring out the Republican base and a little more.

Do you have any response to what he also said in this, which--where he said gay people should vote for Republicans because Republicans oppose Islamic jihad, which he called the greatest anti-gay force in the world?

ELLISON: You know, that just says to me that Mr. Mehlman still has not woken up. He still is stuck on trying to vilify and scapegoat people. I mean, I would hope that he would make a real change and really turn over a new leaf and say, you know what, scapegoating gays is wrong, Scapegoating Muslims is wrong--Catholics. Let"s just get out of that and really get a public ethic where we try to get Americans to come together around these basic issues of identity and respect.

So, you know, he still hasn"t gotten it. And, unfortunately, you know, he"s still suffering some--similar delusion that kept him being dishonest for so long.

OLBERMANN: Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota--it"s always a pleasure. Thanks for your time.

ELLISON: Thank you.

OLBERMANN: Think the GOP has run out of minority groups to target and smear? No. Next: John Boehner attacks those federal bureaucrats with fattened salaries and pensions--federal bureaucrats, like John Boehner.

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