Rep. Rush: Burris Opponents Have Elevated Hate

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) again blasted people trying to block Roland Burris from a Senate seat, saying that they’re keeping blacks from entering “the most exclusive club in the history of the world.”

“We have an appointment, a legal appointment of Roland Burris, by the governor of the state of Illinois. And we have these outcries, this resistance, these folks who are standing on nothing but ego,” Rush told CNN’s D.L. Hughley on Saturday.

“They have elevated the words hate to a Constitutional principle,” he added.

Rush didn’t criticize any lawmakers by name. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other top Democrats kept Burris from entering the Senate last week when he showed up to be sworn in.

Rush, who appeared with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) when he announced Burris as his Senate appointee, has called on Senate leaders to immediately seat Burris, who would become the only black senator.

“Here you have this body, which is the most exclusive club in the history of the world,” said Rush, a former Black Panther. “It makes laws pertaining to every citizen of this nation. And for the last 150 years, there have only been three African-Americans to sit in that body. And my state, thanks to its credit, has sent two, Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama.”

Rush also stood by his earlier assertion that the Senate is the “last bastion of racial plantation politics” and he noted that other minority groups are represented there.

“Right now, as we speak, there are at least three Hispanics, there are two Asians, 12 women and no African-Americans,” Rush said. “And that’s been the legacy and the history.”