Defiant GOP official won't be bullied into stepping down for calling Ferguson rioters 'thugs'

Liberal groups and even some Republicans are pressuring a Florida GOP county official to step down for a Twitter posting last week that called Ferguson, Mo., rioters “thugs” and suggested using fire hoses to bring them under control.

In other words, for saying something no sane person disagrees with.

The same official, Duval County Republican Party leader Kim Crenier, also posted on Twitter after the announcement that a grand jury would not indict Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson. Crenier praised the grand jury’s decision, according to the Jacksonville Times-Union.

Crenier’s tweet has been taken down from the JAXGOP account and her personal Twitter account is private, but the postings were captured by liberal groups hoping to make Republicans look bad in Duval County and around the country.

According to the Times-Union, on Monday Crenier posted:

“Ferguson, MO. No true bill! May God bless and protect Officer Darren Wilson and his family. Facts are facts,” @JaxGOP Monday at 10:34 p.m.

The second post, the one that really has libs in an uproar, was this:

“A suggestion for Ferguson — fire hoses. Grt big fire hoses, serious water pressure. Knock those thugs over. They probly need a shower anyway.”

And liberals were predictably shocked, shocked! that anyone could call rioters “thugs.” The reference to fire hoses brought out equally predictable claims of racism from hyperventilating activists, who seem to think the only place fire hoses have ever been used to control a crowds was in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.

A representative quote came from the Rev. R.L. Gundy, pastor of the Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville and Florida president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“That’s insensitive, it’s racist,” Gundy told Fox 30 in Jacksonville. “To make a comment like ‘thugs’ you might as well call somebody a n*****.”

Actually, no, you might as well not.

Really, what would the reverend call people who burn down businesses after looting them of everything worthwhile? What would the reverend — and the libs who knee-jerk agree with him — call people who take to the streets at night, wearing masks and wreaking havoc on a community?

Maybe he’d prefer “peaceful protesters,” like the mainstream media keeps referring to them?

Please. They’re thugs. They’re criminals. And any mask of civil disobedience they might have once worn has been covered by the “anonymous” masks or bandits’ bandanas they wear to hide their faces while the rioting persists.

According to the Times-Union, the Crenier affair has become the subject of an intraparty Republican squabble in Duval County, with some top Republicans distancing themselves from her, and even one candidate for the Republican nomination for mayor, Jacksonville City Councilman Bill Bishop, cravenly calling for her to step down.

Sensing opportunity, the libs have leaped.

“When you make a comment like this, what you’re trying to do is divide the culture and divide the citizenry of the city along racial line,” Wells Todd, an activist with the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition, told Fox 30.

Well, guess what, Mr. Wells and Rev. Gundy? It was the thugs who hijacked what might well have started as a legitimate protest in Ferguson, Mo., and turned it into a nationally televised crime spree — one sanctioned by not only the liberal establishment and its allies in the mainstream media, but by the attorney general and president of the United States.

They can ask whether family of a man who was beaten to death by teenagers wielding hammers over the weekend in St. Louis whether their loved one was murdered by “thugs.”

Crenier, to her credit, isn’t budging from her opinion, or her position on what “thugs” were rioting and how they could be controlled.

“When you put it in context, there’s nothing sinister,” she told Fox 30.

And she’s not planning to step down from the GOP, regardless of the calls for her resignation.

“I’m not going to change their mind,” she told the station. “But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“When you make comments like this, what you’re trying to do is divide the culture and divide the citizenry of the city along racial lines,” said Todd. – See more at: http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/news/local/civil-rights-leaders-call-resignation-local-gop-of/njHjQ/#sthash.V6s1EIzL.dpuf

Wells Todd with the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition says Crenier’s comments have deeply divided the community.

“When you make comments like this, what you’re trying to do is divide the culture and divide the citizenry of the city along racial lines,” said Todd.

– See more at: http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/news/local/civil-rights-leaders-call-resignation-local-gop-of/njHjQ/#sthash.V6s1EIzL.dpuf