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Last week at a Republican fundraiser, Maine Gov. Paul LePage told his fellow party members that President Obama hates white people.

The Portland Press Herald reported:

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Gov. Paul LePage last week told a group of Republicans that President Barack Obama “hates white people,” according to two state lawmakers who heard the remark directly.

Gov. Paul LePage was heard to say that President Obama “hates white people” at a private fundraiser last week. The governor made the comment during a Maine Republican Party fundraiser on Aug. 12 at the home of John and Linda Fortier in Belgrade. According to the invitation, the fundraiser was billed as a “meet and greet” with LePage and his wife, Ann LePage, and also as an opportunity to meet Rick Bennett, the new state party chairman. Two Republican lawmakers confirmed the comment when asked directly by a Press Herald reporter, but asked that their names be withheld for fear of political retribution. Each said LePage talked about how Obama could have been the best president ever if he highlighted his biracial heritage. But, LePage said, the president hasn’t done that because he hates white people. “Yeah, he said it,” said one lawmaker. “It was one little thing from a speech, but I think most people there thought it was totally inappropriate.”

There is nothing like a little anti-Obama racism to get a Republican Party function really kicking.

How can anyone possibly take the Republican claims that their opposition to President Obama isn’t race based seriously when a sitting governor claims that Barack Obama hates white people? This sort of racism has become as natural to Republicans as breathing.

Of course, these remarks were just part of an average day for Gov. LePage. A week and a half ago, LePage told reporters that he would like to blow up The Portland Press Herald’s building. In June, LePage imposed a media blackout on his entire administration that forbid them to comment on articles published in Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel.

LePage’s media paranoia, sexism, racism, and nearly every other ism that you can think of fit in perfectly with a Republican Party that is trying to ban CNN and NBC from hosting debates because of what they claim is “liberal bias.” LePage isn’t the exception. He is the norm in Republican circles. What makes the Maine governor different is that he says these things out loud.

It is a widely held belief among Republicans ,who also still believe that Obama was born in Kenya, that the president is a racist who is out to get them. LePage made his remark about Obama hating white people so casually because it is an assumed fact among many Republicans that the president is as racist as they are.

It doesn’t matter to Republicans that President Obama’s mother was white. When they look at Obama all they see is a black man in the White House, and like LePage, they assume that the president hates them as much as they hate him.