Baker’s justification for backing
faux-Cherokee Warren: “I wish every Congressman and Senator in the U.S. had a
kinship, felt a kinship to the Cherokee Nation.” Check out Baker on camera in his own words:
Well, that sounds good. But
what if there were an actual Cherokee citizen who really had a kinship with
the Nation? Baker would really, really love that person, right? Right??
What if there was a Cherokee citizen from Westville running for Congress, who’s already
won his party’s nomination in a district that encompasses almost all of the
Cherokee Nation, including Bill John Baker’s house? Well there is, and
his name is Markwayne Mullin.
So how does Baker and the Cherokee
Nation support this Cherokee (who happens to be a Republican, rather than
Baker’s preferred brand)? Well, Baker tells the Daily Oklahoman in an article published September 4 that the Cherokee Nation will “stay out of it,”-- "IT" being the race
between Mullin and the Democrat Rob Wallace, who is not Cherokee.
Which is all well and good, except
that Wallace, the non-Cherokee candidate, had already cashed a $2500 check from the Cherokee Nation back on July 19th, about six weeks before Baker told the
world that we weren’t going to take sides.
Whoops! Whether that was a lie or a
simple mistake, the Nation has officially taken sides AGAINST the Cherokee. So, a
non-Cherokee Democrat gets Baker’s undying support while a card-carrying
Cherokee Republican gets thrown under the bus. By the way, Mullin’s reports
show no donation from his own tribe, even though his non-Cherokee opponent has
already been to the bank.
Then, in September the Democrat,
Wallace, attacked Mullin for taking money from the Cherokee Nation on stimulus
projects while Mullin simultaneously denounced the stimulus. A week
later, the Cherokee Nation produced documents that helped Wallace’s cause and slammed the Cherokee citizen, Mullin.
So, let's go back to that video and
take a look at what is really going on here. What it boils down to is that
Baker supports Elizabeth Warren not because she has a “kinship” to the Cherokee
Nation, like he says, but because she is a Democrat.
And Baker goes out of his way to go against
Markwayne Mullin, EVEN THOUGH he is Cherokee, because he is a Republican.
No matter what your political affiliation: if you judge by actions, you might
think being Democrat was more important to Baker than being Cherokee. And
it puts the Cherokee Nation in the position that if a tribal citizen gets
elected to the U.S. Congress, his own nation will have fought him every step of
the way.
And if Mullin’s elected, every member of Oklahoma’s
congressional delegation will be a Republican and the Cherokee Nation will be
on the record as having pointedly backed Obama and all the Democrats our
congressional delegation ran against. That's not a great position to be in when
most of the Nation’s budget comes from federal funds.
