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The Cult of Obama
The Trumpet ^ | February 17, 2008 | Stephen Flurry

Posted on 02/18/2008 6:43:20 AM PST by processing please hold

The Cult of Obama

Excitement over the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is reaching unparalleled heights, as he has won all eight caucuses and primaries since Super Tuesday. His campaign is raising a million dollars a day—double the rate of Hillary Clinton’s. The Economist is calling him “a political phenomenon.”

But an increasing number of commentators—including some on the liberal side—are discussing a worrisome undercurrent in the trend: the fact that it is all about Obama the personality rather than Obama the potential president. Ignoring substance, an almost religious fervor is building in support of this untested politician.

The National Post quoted one woman at a rally saying,

“Are you kidding me? I’d walk over hot coals to vote for this man. I mean, oh, he’s just … he’s a man that can change not our country, but the world.”

In his weekly column, Charles Krauthammer assembled some disturbing tidbits:

[T]he Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a “salvational fervor” and “idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”

“We are the hope of the future,” sayeth Obama. We can “remake this world as it should be.” Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.” …

ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the “Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities” of “Obama worshipers,” what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls “the Cult of Obama.” Obama’s Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience—to such rhetorical nonsense as “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek.”

That was too much for Time’s Joe Klein. “There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism,” he wrote. “The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.”

You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times’s Paul Krugman that “the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.” Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama’s Potomac primary victory speech with “… I felt this thrill going up my leg.” When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama “comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” …

Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He’s going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can’t possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war — with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.

The Weekly Standard calls Mr. Obama “The Magical Democrat”:

It makes one feel like a killjoy to point out that Barack Obama is merely a man, and a politician at that. At the risk of being even more of a sourpuss, one can note that, in spite of the meaning he’s already giving to so many people’s lives, Obama is a thoroughly conventional liberal.

As an aside, James Taranto printed this collection of news items about people fainting at Obama’s campaign rallies, and Breitbart tv has this clip telling the same story.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2008; cult; obama; obamamessiah
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To: petercooper
We need a current events test as well as an IQ test in order to vote.

I kinda wanted to say that myself, but I know that people would react with "elitist!" screams. Maybe Boortz has a better idea: If you pay $0-10,000 in federal taxes, you get one vote. $10,001-20,000, two votes and so on up to $50,000 and five votes. After that, no more votes. That way, only those with a vested interest in the country and who productively contribute to it have a voice in the way it's run.

81 posted on 02/18/2008 9:14:51 AM PST by econjack (Some people are as dumb as soup.)
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To: elhombrelibre
We'll see if this story gets legs if Sinclair passes the polygraph test. Until then it's a holding pattern for many.

I believe it should be open for discussions, sans peur et sans reproche.

There's been a bit of reproaching here on FR, I suspect some obama supporters are here.

82 posted on 02/18/2008 9:20:54 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: jpl

That may be kool aid in chrissy’s cup, and he’s feeling all tingly inside.


83 posted on 02/18/2008 9:22:40 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: processing please hold

His loins are tingling!


84 posted on 02/18/2008 9:31:47 AM PST by oblomov
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To: oblomov

*snicker*


85 posted on 02/18/2008 9:37:02 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: Kolokotronis
I think (and know) that many Evangelicals are conflicted about McCain and Bush in light of these events: Kosovo, muslim immigration, hand holding with the Saudis, refusal to recognize the Christian holocaust in Turkey etc.

But they support these guys because they are for tax cuts and pro life (less so for McCain), both the right thing to do. And let’s not be disingenuous here...many “Christian Orthodox” would rather party and do business than take moral stands the way Evangelicals do.

86 posted on 02/18/2008 9:42:00 AM PST by eleni121 (+ En Touto Nika! By this sign conquer! + Constantine the Great)
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To: processing please hold
At a birthday party this weekend, my friend's husband asked me who I was voting for. Well, I told him at this point, no one- I'm writing in. This guy was a staunch republican, and voted for Bush twice. But this summer when I saw him, he said he was voting for Edwards. EDWARDS! How does someone go from Bush to Edwards? So, when I asked him who he was voting for, he said his guy was out of the race (Edwards). He then asked me, 'why not vote for Obama?' My reply, 'Tell me one thing Obama has accomplished.'

His reply, 'why does he have to accomplish anything?'

UGH. And he's a lawyer to boot (hence Edwards). The world is really headed to Idiocracy. If you haven't seen that movie, its pretty stupid, but 100% right in its underlying message... we are getting dumber.

87 posted on 02/18/2008 9:42:22 AM PST by rintense (You don't advance conservatism by becoming more liberal. Piss off McCain and Huck!)
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Comment #88 Removed by Moderator

To: processing please hold; potlatch; devolve; ntnychik; MeekOneGOP

89 posted on 02/18/2008 9:52:47 AM PST by PhilDragoo (Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
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To: rintense
His reply, 'why does he have to accomplish anything?'

Unbelievable that anyone let alone a lawyer would say something so stupid.

I have seen Idiocracy, several times, it's a movie to laugh at, how stupid and dumb down the world had become. His name, 'Not Sure' and how he came by it was a hoot.

90 posted on 02/18/2008 9:53:19 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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Comment #91 Removed by Moderator

To: PhilDragoo

Nothing is showing up in your post. I’m on dial up so I’ve had to blocked may pictures or I couldn’t read a thread, it would be too slow.


92 posted on 02/18/2008 9:57:21 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: processing please hold

It appears that the Dems have found a better demagogue than Bill Clinton. Obama puts Bill Clinton in the shade. Don’t even mention Hillary whose speeches couldn’t excite anyone even her most rabid supporters. But naturally what would one expect of Democrats but to support a pol with as thin as resume as Obama simply on his “vision” of the future. His socialist vision I mean. I’ve never seen a pol promise so much with as little chance to actually deliver.


93 posted on 02/18/2008 10:32:16 AM PST by driftless2
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To: driftless2
I agree, he runs circles around bill.

His socialist vision I mean. I’ve never seen a pol promise so much with as little chance to actually deliver.

Maybe he'll discover the theory of everything. Giving everybody everything they want. Doesn't matter if he delivers, only if he promises too to get elected. And millions of dumba$$es will fall for it.

94 posted on 02/18/2008 10:47:18 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: processing please hold
"socialist vision"

Of course the Dems do this socialist thing every election cycle, but I've never seen anyone peddle this stuff better than Obama. And the reason he gets away with it is because nobody (inside his party) has asked him about it, and he doesn't talk about it in his public speeches. It's all "hope" and "change" for the Obama public appearances. His actual social policy is right out of Marx.

95 posted on 02/18/2008 10:59:42 AM PST by driftless2
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To: driftless2
It's all "hope" and "change" for the Obama public appearances. His actual social policy is right out of Marx.

We know the hildabeast is a marxist. Which marxist will win out?

Of course the Dems do this socialist thing every election cycle, but I've never seen anyone peddle this stuff better than Obama. And the reason he gets away with it is because nobody (inside his party) has asked him about it, and he doesn't talk about it in his public speeches.

I believe they don't ask because they already know the answer.

96 posted on 02/18/2008 11:12:26 AM PST by processing please hold ( "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.")
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To: F15Eagle

Obama appears to be a great stage hypnotist,

or he fits H.L. Menchen’s definition of a Demagogue to a tee, “one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

Probably a mixture of both.


97 posted on 02/18/2008 11:59:51 AM PST by 444Flyer (The Lord is a warrior, the Lord is His name (Exodus 15:3))
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To: F15Eagle

http://www.hypnotismsecrets.com


98 posted on 02/18/2008 12:04:50 PM PST by 444Flyer (The Lord is a warrior, the Lord is His name (Exodus 15:3))
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To: PhilDragoo

Good post Phil


99 posted on 02/18/2008 5:21:21 PM PST by potlatch
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To: processing please hold

I see that now he has the Muslims supporting him,


100 posted on 02/21/2008 6:49:10 AM PST by Piquaboy (22 year veteran of the Army, Air Force and Navy, Pray for all our military .)
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