Posted on 09/22/2015 6:47:25 AM PDT by SJackson
How Trump should have responded to the town hall questioner who claimed Obama is a Muslim.
Everybody has pounced on Donald Trump for not confronting a questioner at a town hall meeting who said President Obama is a Muslim and “not even an American.” Trump ignored the statements and responded to the questioner’s concern about terrorist training camps with a vapid “We’re going to be looking at that.” But the critics have a point, though not the one they think. Trump should have made the question an opportunity to direct our attention to where it belongs––not on Obama’s biography, but on his actions and the need for Republicans to put more energy into the fight against them.
Missing that point, Republicans who already dislike Trump were quick to condemn him. Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News that Trump should have “immediately sort of undermined and denied the premise” of the question, a sentiment shared by NRO’s Charles C.W. Cooke. Long-shot presidential candidate Lindsey Graham said Trump missed a chance to put the man “in his place.” Many pundits held up as a model John McCain, who while campaigning in 2008 corrected a woman who said Obama is an Arab. They seem to forget that despite McCain’s high-minded praise of Obama, he still lost.
Meanwhile the Democrats and their media shills hyperventilated over the remarks and the “birther” movement they reflected. Slate called Trump’s non-response a “devastating gaffe” and a “crime against decency.” Chris Matthews called it “racist crap,” seemingly unaware that Islam is a religion, not a race. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as cognitively confused as Matthews, screamed, “GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already.” Whoever writes Hillary Clinton’s tweets scolded, “Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out.” Hillary’s hypocrisy, as many pointed out, was classic Clintonian shamelessness, given that the whole birther/secret Muslim meme was exploited in 2008 by her own campaign.
Of course, the Dems immediately made the episode emblematic of the whole Republican Party. “The vile rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates is appalling,” Wasserman Schultz screeched, a brazen non sequitur. And the White House tagged along, presidential spokesman Josh Earnest saying, “I don’t think anybody who has been paying attention to Republican politics are [sic] really surprised.” In other words, Democrats gave us the usual nasty partisan politics hidden behind lofty calls for decorum.
The real problem with the responses from both Republicans and Democrats is that they assume that expressing such beliefs about Obama’s birthplace and religion is beyond the pale of civilized society, rather than democratic politics as usual. As such, at this point these biographical speculations are not very interesting or useful. The notion that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. is irrelevant, since a child born to a U.S. citizen is a citizen wherever he’s born. As for his religious beliefs, Occam’s razor suggests a much simpler reason for his actions than the fact that he is a secret Muslim. In reality, everything Obama believes, says, or does regarding Muslims and Islam is totally consistent with what any Progressive would, whether atheist, Unitarian, or Scientologist. Being a product of three American universities––whose faculties are marinated in noble-savage multiculturalism, loathing of America, and hatred of traditional Christianity––is a much more economical explanation for Obama’s policies, which are predictable for anyone familiar with the ideology of today’s universities.
More important, Republicans shouldn’t acquiesce in the Progressives’ charge that “birtherism” is some sort of heinous crime so “horrendous” that any expression of it must be repudiated immediately, and incoherently, as racist––certainly not after the despicable slanders the Democrats propagated about George W. Bush, from “Bushitler” to movies and books fantasizing about assassinating the president. And have we already forgotten the Dem’s Goebbels, Michael Moore, and his grotesque fictional “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11? The June 2004 premier of this recycling of left-wing lies about the origins of the Iraq War––basically “Bush Lied, Millions Died” and “No Blood For Oil’––was attended by Democratic honchos like Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Indeed, Jimmy Carter invited Moore to sit with him at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
. And this canard is still a staple of the Dems. Yet Republicans rarely challenge it or noisily demand a repudiation of it from anyone peddling that old lie, not the way Democrats successfully do when their messiah is the target. And don’t think the “Bush lied” meme has gone away. In August Obama gave a speech defending his Iran deal, touting the triumph of “smart diplomacy” over the opposing conservative “mindset.” The following statement is a thinly veiled reprise of the lies Democrats circulated about George Bush’s “mindset” responsible for the Iraq war.
It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy, a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus, a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported.
These are gross distortions of history. Bush spent several months on futile diplomacy with the U.N., and went to war with a coalition of 49 nations. But the last phrase, especially the verb “exaggerated,” is a truly despicable lie. It wasn’t George Bush and the nefarious neo-cons who “exaggerated” a threat based on the information consistent across every intelligence agency in the free world. This was the same intelligence upon which an overwhelming majority of members of Congress in October 2002 based their approval of the resolution authorizing the war, including future presidential candidates John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton.
The intelligence turned out to be partly wrong, although we only learned that because of the invasion. Saddam Hussein ended up having few stockpiles of weapons, though he still possessed the dormant programs that could produce them again in the future. But the intelligence community’s mistaking the size and extent of Hussein’s stockpiles is not the same thing as claiming Bush “exaggerated” the threat. The estimation of the threat was consistent with the intelligence. Yet Obama’s sly slur against a former president and his party went unnoticed by the commentariat. (Nor, by the way, has it dawned on the media that such a charge is particularly shameless given the continuing reports that the Obama administration manipulated intelligence to confirm the 2012 campaign narrative that al Qaeda was dying and global jihadism at bay.)
So it seems that a sitting president falsely accusing a predecessor of “exaggerating” a threat and as a result killing 4500 and maiming 32,000 Americans because of some malignant “mindset” is unremarkable, while failing to challenge some random citizen who thinks the president is a secret Muslim is a heinous crime demanding instant retraction and groveling apologies. That many Republicans practice this double standard in the teeth of the Dems’ vicious slanders is one reason Trump is so popular. Indeed, he refused calls to apologize by tweeting, “If someone made a nasty or controversial statement about me to the president, do you really think he would come to my rescue. No chance!”
Trump should have responded, but not by scolding the man and preening, like John McCain in 2008, about his superior sophistication and magnanimity. He should have used the opportunity to send this message to everybody––Obama’s personal life is no longer the issue. He’s a lame duck, and any questions about him that should have been raised and answered when he was a candidate are now a matter for future historians, especially of a media so corrupted by their ideology and class prejudices that they refused to investigate red flags that would have had them snorting and charging uncontrollably had they involved a Republican.
Obama counts now only for what he is doing, which has little to do with where he was born or what faith he professes. And the Republican Congress should be using every political means possible to thwart and block, or at least exact a political price, for Obama’s actions. Here’s a place to start: pull a Harry Reid and change the filibuster rule, and then cover Obama’s desk with vetoed bills the Republicans can hang around Hillary’s (or Biden’s) neck like so many albatrosses. Everything else is just a distraction.
Apparently Michelle was confused about obama's "home country." - Watch/Listen
Roger that! By now, six and approx. half a years into this mess, why is this even being brought up anymore? Nothing is going to be done no matter if any and all accusations are proven to be true. For what ever difference they make at this point. There is NO backbone to do anything because it would prove that “we” are racist bigots or whatever. Me, I don’t give two craps that the lyin’ king is black(half), white(half), green, red, yellow or whatever. I detest what he’s done to this country and the ugly divisiveness that he has been steadily been pushing. When you hear his supporters, about all you can do is shake your head in disgust. They are the same people that see the hildebeast as a patriotic, soft hearted caring grannie. These IPOS/LPOS/SPOS/UPOS will NOT be awakened to the evil. Next time the Donald is hit with these questions he should again NOT fall into the trap and simply say that it is not in his data base and this far into the reign of the lyin’ king, it makes no difference. He (the lyin’ king) ain’t runnin’ so why address the “issue” at all now? Ridiculous.
The guy in the crowd was most likely a plant, sent by the Clinton machine. No one has seen him since he made his “offensive” remark.
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What on earth would lead the author to ever think the Republican congress would do this? All evidence points to the contrary; the Republicans will always cave, capitulate, and cower. That is what they do and its who they are. Hoping they will suddenly do otherwise is simply delusional.
Usually, they're exposed one way or the other within 24 hours, though. Either as a plant by the likes of Freepers et al, or if he actually was legit, he would've received the Joe the Plumber treatment from the MSM post haste.
If Obummer does not have to show his college records, why should Hitlery have to show us her email?
No law requires him to show college records, nor his medical records. Democrats never seem to want to release those things, at least back to Clinton. Hillary’s EMails are the property of the State Department. Unless State’s regulations are different that virtually all large corporations, personal EMails as well.
Anyone who enters the political area knows that he is presenting himself for public scrutiny and criticism. And certainly it's important that he be.
Do these people think the President is too fragile to protect himself from criticism? Do they think he cannot take care of himself without their protection? Do they think they need to shield him from impertinent or irrelevant questions? If so, their assumptions are insulting.
Why the hyperventilation? Why the outrage? Why is neglecting to "put the man in his place" a “devastating gaffe” and a “crime against decency” and “racist crap”?
One would think the subject so horrifying and frightening that to mention it is taboo!
As though some unspoken family interdict prevents ANYONE from mentioning Great Aunt Agatha's age or her long-ago divorce or the mere fact that she dyes her hair.
Why not let the questions fly until they exhaust themselves and the facts speak for themselves?
> Obama’s personal life is no longer the issue. He’s a lame duck, and any questions about him that should have been raised and answered when he was a candidate are now a matter for future historians
Questions were raised but we were told to shut up. Whether he is a lame duck is completely irrelevant to questions regarding his eligibility. The question remains. So does the liability for crimes.
This article is no different than what we’ve heard for years: shut up and move along.
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