Conservative radio host Dana Loesch said that the flare-up over Cliven Bundy’s comments on race is missing the point. 
 
 Loesch, who has defended the Nevada rancher on her website and on Fox News, on Thursday suggested that The New York Times coaxed an unseasoned public figure into a tangential discussion about race. 
 
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 reset Bundy's controversial remarks 
 
 “I hope no one is surprised that an old man rancher isn’t media trained to express himself perfectly,” she wrote, noting that “it’s justified to have a healthy suspicion of the New York Times” for raising the issue. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Rand Paul slams Cliven Bundy's racist rant) 
 
 Bundy made the racial comments on Saturday during one of his daily news conferences that was attended by only one reporter and one photograher, according to the Times. 
 
 The paper quoted him saying, “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro [as he recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas] … and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do. 
 
 “And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” Bundy continued. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: 10 things to know about Cliven Bundy) 
 
 Loesch said that Bundy’s comments might have been aimed at “decrying what big government has done to the black family,” as opposed to necessarily being racist remarks. She said the Bundy affair is primarily about “government overreach.” 
 
 “If Bundy is a racist, that is awful,” she wrote, “but what exactly does that have to do with the [Bureau of Land Management]? I’ve been saying for weeks that this isn’t about one rancher. It’s about government overreach.” 
 
 Loesch concluded by suggesting that liberals are trying to distract from government overreach by focusing the story exclusively on Bundy. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: The left's secret club plans for 2014, 2016) 
 
 Ben Howe, contributing editor at the conservative blog RedState.com, seemed to echo Loesch’s statements on BLM with a series of tweets on Thursday morning. 
 
 In one message, Howe tweeted: “We’re running into classic conservative over-correction here. Bundy may be an idiot. This doesn’t make BLM actions correct. Come on ppl.” ||||| The Fox News Crusade For Cliven Bundy 
 
 The New York Times has overheard Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who, instead of paying decades of overdue grazing fees, met the Bureau of Land management with guns and a small militia—saying this: 
 
 "I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, "and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn't have nothing to do. They didn't have nothing for their kids to do. They didn't have nothing for their young girls to do. "And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?" he asked. "They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom." 
 
 Conservative and libertarian politicians have been sympathetic toward Bundy's cause, framing his protest as an act of patriotism in the face of an overstepping government. The grazing fees were related to the Endangered Species Act. Ranchers on protected federal land have to pay a fee if they want to use it. And most of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government. 
 
 Expect every politician to back away from the issue. 
 
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 "His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him," Sen. Rand Paul said in a statement Thursday morning. 
 
 But it was just Monday night when Paul offered a careful defense of Bundy's actions to Fox News. Saying that while breaking the law is wrong, the government should rethink its business managing grazing land. "I'm for obeying the law and I'm not for a violent outcome," he said. "But with regard to the general question, should the states have some prerogative in this, I think so." 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who hasn't had many kind words for Bundy before Thursday, called the rancher a "hateful racist" in a statement. 
 
 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz has also rallied behind Bundy, saying the standoff "is the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government on." He said the administration was "using the jackboot of authoritarianism to come against the citizens." 
 
 Conservative Fox News anchor Sean Hannity has had Bundy on his show multiple times, and Bundy calls Hannity one of his heroes. 
 
 Sen. Dean Heller, who the Times writes has called Bundy's supporters "patriots," offered this response to the paper via a spokesperson. He "completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy's appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way." 
 
 Correction: An earlier version of this story mispelled Sen. Dean Heller's first name. 
 
 Elahe Izadi contributed to this article. ||||| Sermons that begin with sentences like “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro” generally don’t end well, especially when they’re uttered by white conservative ranchers gleefully breaking federal law. Such was the case on Saturday, when Cliven Bundy, the man whose illegal cattle grazing has won him plaudits from multiple Republican senators and the right to be declared a “domestic terrorist” by Senator Harry Reid, decided to let a reporter and some supporters in on his particularly racist world view. 
 
 “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” Bundy said, according to The New York Times. The rancher shared the story of what he saw when he drove past a housing project in North Las Vegas. “In front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids—and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch—they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.” 
 
 “And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” Bundy asked, before answering his own question in the worst possible way. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.” 
 
 The rancher has been illegally grazing his cattle on public land since 1993, and owes the government more than $1 million in back fees His refusal to pay—which creates a de facto “government subsidy” of his own—prompted a court order that sent Bureau of Land Management rangers down to the ranch to confiscate his herd. After Bundy’s case was reported in the press, hundreds of armed militiamen rallied to his side, and he effectively won a standoff with the rangers. 
 
 Bundy’s vile comments are bound to complicate life for the big-name politicians who more or less ran to his defense in recent weeks. Kentucky senator Rand Paul, while noting that he is “for obeying the law,” dismissed Reid’s “domestic terrorist” label and said the Nevada senator should “calm the rhetoric a little bit.” In multiple appearances on Fox News, which has taken a predictable liking to Bundy’s narrative of a rancher and armed vigilantes taking on the big, bad federal government, Paul sympathized with Bundy’s position and said much of the land currently owned by the federal government should be transferred to states. In a radio appearance, he went further: “I think there’s an opposite thing to what Harry Reid said, and that’s that the federal government shouldn’t violate the law.” 
 
 Nevada Republican senator Dean Heller has also defended Bundy and his gang. “What senator Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots,” Heller said during a joint TV appearance with Reid. “It’s a pretty broad brush... When you have boy scouts there, you have veterans at the event, you have grandparents at the event.” 
 
 Heller’s spokesman told the Times that the senator “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.” Paul’s camp didn’t immediately offer a comment to the paper, and VF Daily left a message at his Washington office. Texas attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abott, who took on the Bureau of Land Management’s plans to confiscate land, said through a spokeswoman that his statement was unrelated to Bundy’s case. 
 
 Aside from a merry troop of sympathizers and Fox News amplifiers such as Sean Hannity, Bundy’s situation did not become a rallying cry for the broader Republican Party—even though the rancher’s racist anti-welfare position is not uncommon in certain conservative circles. A Politico report from the middle of the month revealed that most conservative lawmakers (and, Senator Paul excepted, Tea Partiers) decided not to comment on the Bundy case. In the wake of Bundy’s racist comments, those who stayed silent are probably thanking their lucky stars. 
 
 Update (10:50 A.M.): Paul denounced Bundy’s comments about black Americans in a statement provided to Business Insider: “His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him.” 
 
 Update (1:03 P.M.): Bundy appeared on Alex Jones’s radio show to say that he hopes The New York Times will retract the quotations at issue. “The other picture is, when they was back in the South, they were in the front of their porch as a family unit, and they had chickens and gardens to take care of, and their men were out working,” Bundy said in his attempt at damage control. “I didn’t say ‘picking cotton,’ but they were out working. It seemed to me like their family unit and happiness was greater there than it is here in the city in a government subsidy home.” 
 
 The Bundy Ranch team also posted a statement on its Facebook page. “There are new rumors going around about Cliven,” it reads. “We all know that with the media, words are taken out of context, meanings are twisted, and they can take anything and turn it into what they want it to be. Cliven is a good man, he loves all people, he is not a racist man. He wants what is best for everyone.” 
 
 There’s a slight complicating factor with Bundy’s claims of being “taken out of context”: video of Bundy saying the words—as printed in the Times—has already surfaced online. We’ve embedded the footage below. 
 
 In another radio interview, Bundy reiterated the “chickens and gardens” comments and said, “the statement was right.” “That’s exactly what I said,” Bundy told The Peter Schiff Show. At this point, even if he can’t keep his story straight, it should be clear what the rancher believes. ||||| Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy attempted again on Thursday to clarify controversial remarks, but did not walk back what many saw as racist comments he made earlier to the New York Times. 
 
 “I may not have a very big word base or vocabulary,” Bundy said, but added that he knows what he means, “when I say slavery.” 
 
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 At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Bundy defended his comments saying he did not say that black people were better off as slaves, just that he was wondering. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: 10 things to know about Cliven Bundy) 
 
 “I’m still wondering,” Bundy said, who repeatedly referred to black people throughout his presser as the “Negro community.” 
 
 “They seem to be slaves to the welfare system … but they have an opportunity,” Bundy said. 
 
 Regarding the attention his initial comments have since received, Bundy said he won’t “condemn” the media, adding it has led to a conversation. 
 
 “It really don’t matter to me if you twist my words up,” Bundy said. “It matters that my heart goes out to the people of this world and they understand what I stand for.” 
 
 Earlier on on Thursday, Bundy tried to clarify his comments on race, saying that he was just “wondering” whether black people would be better off as slaves. 
 
 “I’m wondering if they’re better off under a government subsidy and their young women are having the abortions and their young men are in jail and their older women and children are sitting out on the cement porch without nothing to do,” the Nevada rancher said in a radio interview on The Peter Schiff Show. 
 
 Bundy repeated similar comments at his afternoon press conference again asking whether black people would be happier in the South. 
 
 Bundy caused outrage from figures on the right and left Thursday with statements on race first reported by The New York Times. 
 
 On Schiff’s show, Bundy continued: “I’m wondering are they better off being slaves in that sense or better off being slaves to the United States government in the sense of the subsidy. I’m wondering. The statement was right.”
– Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is standing by his widely condemned remarks on slavery even as most of his conservative allies hastily back away from him. "I don't think I'm wrong," Bundy, who wondered if black people were "better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life" than living "under government subsidy," tells CNN. "I think I'm right." He says he had been "just wondering" if black people are really better off now, adding that instead of slavery he really "meant to compare it with maybe life on the farm or life in the South, where they had some chickens and the gardens, and they had something to do." More: Bundy, who is embroiled in a dispute with federal authorities over grazing rights, admitted that having his cattle graze on public land might make him as much of a "welfare queen" as people who survive on government checks. "But I'll tell you I'm producing something for America and using a resource that nobody else would use or could use. I'm putting red meat on the table," he said. Despite some slight backtracking in the CNN interview, Bundy's remarks to a radio show yesterday were almost identical to the ones that first caused offense, Politico finds. "I'm wondering are they better off being slaves in that sense or better off being slaves to the United States government in the sense of the subsidy. I’m wondering. The statement was right," he said. Bundy's remarks have been strongly condemned by former allies including Sens. Dean Heller and Rand Paul and pundits including Sean Hannity, Mediaite reports. "His comments are beyond repugnant to me. They are beyond despicable to me. They are beyond ignorant to me," said the Fox host, adding that he fears the remarks overshadow the "legitimate issue" of government overreach. Conservative commentators including Crystal Wright said they feared the controversy will be yet another setback for the GOP's attempts to attract minority voters, the Washington Post finds. "My parents didn't sit-in at lunch counters so that they would be told that they would have been better off learning how to pick cotton," Wright said. "We as conservatives don't do a great job of cleaning up these racial missteps."