Powell suggests Limbaugh's comments about him show GOP still has a "problem" with race

I was just joking about the juxtaposition of "Satan" and "hell" in the quote.

Again, the people of CT didn't vote for him in the primary. That's who "drummed" him out of the party.

What part of Joe LOSING THE PRIMARY don't you understand? He is NOT a Democrat, and the "radicals" to whom you refer are the voters. Moveon.org didn't do anything that Republican organizations did, you just don't like the results.

My statement was that Powell benefited from the army's affirmative action.

Prove it.

(And you've joined the league of troll racists on this site).

You're still suggesting that a black person that's appointed and turns out to be adequate is somehow a surprise, because it goes against "common sense". If the person in question is well-qualified, then what does any political consideration have to do with it? What's to say that they weren't chosen on completely level grounds, outside of your personal bias?

By the way, the only way you can claim that affirmative action is racist is if you can show that it's based on the premise that a minority is superior to the majority. That's what the word means. Why so many conservatives are allergic to definitions is a great mystery to me.

"Affirmative action is an institutionalized form of racism."

Uh-huh. You know what else is institutionalized racism? Oh, just maybe the denial to people of color of the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to drink at the same water fountain as anyone else, denial of access to credit based on nothing but skin color, and the systematic depiction of people of color as criminals, sexual menaces, mental inferiors and comic relief in mass media. But sure, Powell never faced anything remotely related to those things while growing up in Harlem and the South Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s as a child of Jamaican immigrant parents.

You asked in a previous post for someone to remind you of Powell's successes. I guess you missed the parts of Powell's biography that included his service to this country as Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, General, Four Star General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State, or his having earned the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Expert Infantryman Badge, the Ranger Tab, the Parachutist Badge, the Pathfinder Badge, the Air Assault Badge, the Presidential Service Badge, the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge, the Army Staff Identification Badge, the Military medals and ribbons, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Army medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Soldier's Medal, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Army Commendation Medal with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Defense Service Medal with 1 Bronze Service Star, the Vietnam Service Medal with 1 Silver Service Star, the Army Service Ribbon and the Army Overseas Service Ribbon. And contrary to what you say, being called "the reluctant warrior" is hardly an insult; it's an honor.

How sad that you need reminding about this man's successes.

And a lot of minorities wouldn't be in early graves except for the fact that when General Powell was rising in the ranks of the military, their "affirmative action" towards the poor and minorities forced them to fight the war that your side's leaders chose not to fight. But they still supported having 58,000 people sacrificed for the war they supported but refused to fight.

"I am confident that most of the people who serve in the armed services earned their medals and honors."

Except for women minorities, whose career successes you've argued have been artificially inflated.

"I'm not making any 'racially tinged' statements about Powell. He would be a traitor to the GOP cause if he were colored blue. He would be a poor military leader if he were orange. His character and abilities (or lack thereof) are not a matter of race."

Seriously, do you have memory problems? These are your words from your first comment, I believe, on this thread:

"In that respect, Powell has a lot in common with Eisenhower. The difference being that Eisenhower rose to prominence through hard work and diligence, while Powell was the beneficiary of a drastic social engineering project that the army pushed through in the 70's and beyond, making race more important than competence for promotions."

If you're going to begin by claiming that the man got where he is in life because he's more black than qualified, why be shy about it now?

Affirmative action demeans its beneficiaries.

No, it doesn't.

Prior to the implementation of affirmative action programs, women and minorities were ridiculously underrepresented in educational institutions and higher salary jobs. Now, according to you, there was no horrible affirmative action program skewing our wonderful meritocritous educational system and workforce, so the only way to account for these disproportionately lower rates of success would be to posit that women and minorities simply didn't have as much merit as white men. And conveniently, even after the implementation of affirmative action programs, you make the same claim. Your problem is that you're beginning with the assumption that not all people are equally capable of the same accomplishments.

Institutionalized racism exists and has existed long before (and in a much more pervasive form) than any affirmative action program. The difference is that affirmative action is actually a rigorous, systematic, documented effort that takes as its premise the idea that merit is equally probable among every demographic category. This is not demeaning. This is the opposite of demeaning.

Demeaning is when a man is denied a promotion because he looks to "street" to represent the company. Demeaning is when you baselessly cast doubt on the accomplishments and career achievements of any woman or minority who has ever worked in an organization that implemented an affirmative action policy, even when you know that those policies ensure that no one is promoted who is not fully qualified. Demeaning is claiming that any effort to fight that kind of racism is "reverse racism".

"I never said anything racially tinged about Powell."

OK, now you're simply not telling the truth. Your words were: "In that respect, Powell has a lot in common with Eisenhower. The difference being that Eisenhower rose to prominence through hard work and diligence, while Powell was the beneficiary of a drastic social engineering project that the army pushed through in the 70's and beyond, making race more important than competence for promotions."

Your original claim is that Powell's racial identity outweighed his merits in determining his career successes. If you can't be honest about what you yourself said, you certainly can't be trusted to be honest in your account of anything that goes on in the world outside your own skull.

That's the point. Powell was reluctant to use force when it was appropriate. That's why they called him a "reluctant warrior." The whole Desert Storm operation ended in an untenable stalemate because neither Bush-I nor Powell had the wisdom or brass to finish the job.
What you are describing is prudence, not reluctance. Powell is not a coward. He is just not a good leader nor a wise leader. He has no credibility among the GOP, nor should he have - he is a turncoat.