For the second straight year, President Obama intends to deliver a back to school speech to students at schools who will agree to broadcast it.
So far at least, the extreme rhetoric denouncing it has been pretty muted. In fact, there hasn't been any that's come across the transom that I can detect.
That's a far cry from a year ago, when some of the silliest, shrillest over the top rhetoric was employed by a variety of Republicans about the President "indoctrinating" students. Of course, that was perhaps a preview of just some of the invective to come Obama's way over the next year.
Now one of the worst of those critics, the disgraced former Florida Republican party chairman Jim Greer, is apologizing to the President. In a statement issued Monday, Greer blamed racists within the GOP:
In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the nations school children, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served. Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our Party today. My children and I look forward to the Presidents speech.
When the Palm Beach Post asked Greer for some names, please, the former chair, who earlier this year was indicted on six felony counts, declined to do so, texting, "No names, but committee consists of people who fought me on outreach and I had to discipline state members who promoted racists (sic) comments which I was also fought on too."