Posted on 08/03/2009 1:07:47 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
First, credit where it's due: A few lonely Republican leaders are belatedly trying to clean up the party's mess of crazy, from the racially tinged character attacks on Sonia Sotomayor to the unhinged rhetoric of the Birthers to the overall vicious and fact-free spew of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. It's not working yet -- Beck's claiming Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" on Tuesday might be a new low -- but at least someone's trying.
Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to kick off a new GOP flirtation with decency when he announced his vote to confirm Sotomayor last week. (Yet Graham wound up the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to support her, with even supposed judicial moderates like Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch voting against her.) Then, after Birther madness reached a new high, a few mid-level GOP names -- Mike Huckabee, Michael Steele and even fact-averse propagandists Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly -- began distancing themselves from their party's anti-Obama fringe. “Chairman Steele believes that this is an unnecessary distraction and believes that the president is a U.S. citizen," a spokeswoman for Steele told the Plum Line's Greg Sargent. Better late than never.
Still, Limbaugh and Beck continue to ratchet up their alarming and increasingly racist hatred for the president. Both of them have taken to insisting that the first president with a black father and white mother, mostly raised by his white grandparents, is a racist who hates white people. And look for this kind of crazy to escalate with the party base.
Limbaugh's been on this beat for a long time, but the complicated Gates case inspired him to a whole new level of fiction. "Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman," the radio bully told his audience last Friday, the day Obama expressed regret over his quick judgment in the matter and invited Skip Gates and Officer James Crowley to the White House for a beer. On Monday he insisted, "I do believe [Obama is] an angry black guy!"
Weepy Glenn Beck has been even more hysterical, flatly declaring Obama a "racist" on Fox News and elaborating: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture." Watch Beck blather below; listen to his response to the ensuing criticism here.
(VIDEO AT LINK)
There's a psychological term for this kind of unhinged behavior, and it's called "projection." These two racists are projecting their own racial feelings onto Obama. Increasingly, the ranks of the racially blinkered (and I include MSNBC's Pat Buchanan here) are playing victim, insisting Obama's modest moves -- appointing a Latina justice, using the Gates case to speak out against racial profiling -- are reversing the racial order wholesale, and putting white men on the bottom of the pile.
One look at Congress, the Supreme Court, Fortune 500 CEOs -- or conversely, at prison cells across America -- tells you how delusional the Beck-Limbaugh-Buchanan view is, but that doesn't make it irrelevant. It's likely to get worse, as persistent economic hardship plus a spike in right-wing racist rhetoric increases the appeal of scapegoat strategies.
It's time for more decent Republicans to take a stand against the vicious anti-Obama racism of the party fringe and their broadcast fuhrers. On Monday Ohio Sen. George Voinovich blasted the dominance of his party's Southern fringe, and its outdated Southern Strategy with its emphasis on racial division. Like Voinovich, I think GOP racism and race-baiting will consign the party to a long time in the political minority. But it could claim a lot of other victims along the way.
If you can stand to watch more right-wing crazy, this Media Matters video sums it all up: (VIDEO AT LINK)
You are right on the money!
Except for one sentence:
“The Republican and Democratic parties are political organizations, not criminal gangs.”
Sorry, but the fact that the Parties are morally indistinguishable from such criminal gangs is why the country is in the hole it finds itself.
IMHO.
Great post, however!
“fact-free spew of Rush Limbaugh”
- - - yet another critic of Rush Limbaugh who hasn’t really listened to Rush. He doesn’t know what he’s taking about.
“Limbaugh and Beck continue to ratchet up their alarming and increasingly racist hatred for the president.”
Take a good look at this and you will know what a lie looks like. Remember it.
Joan Walsh is pathetic. Rush had an audio clip of her last week, where she said:
“Obama got to where he was, in my opinion, largely because he makes white people feel like he knows we’re all trying really hard and we really like it when black people make us feel that way.”
This woman LIVES for the approval of others. She is pathetic, a dog begging for a treat and an “atta girl!” from the nearest African-American.
Joan Walsh is not a serious thinker and not a single person takes her very seriously. Her whole persona is one of vapid liberalism and she’s simply consumed with a sense of entitlement. She has nothing to add.
She even lumped BOR and Ann Coulter together, as if conservatives see them as birds of a feather. Such sillinessy. Ann is a straight up conservative lady who may not exactly be onboard with the birth certificate controversy but BOR is (at times) a mocker of conservatives.
>>>Well, if there isn’t any racism then there’s a whole lot of hysteria and hatred.<<<
First, a definition: racism is the belief that you can determine a person’s character, personality, and political beliefs by the color of their skin or ethnicity.
I haven’t seen a racist speaking for conservatism in decades. I regularly see leftists stereotyping people according to race and ethnicity, and I have been confronted by African-Americans and Native Americans spewing the most awful racist comments - usually presented in terms of being a victim or in terms of “pride.”
Then there’s “hysteria and hatred.” By his own comments, and the comments of those who taught and raised Obama, there is a distinct desire to reshape and reform American culture into something distinctly Marxist. Those are facts, if you accept the words of those speaking them on their face. It is not “hysteria” to look at the words of Alinsky and conclude that the foundations of American culture are under attack. Those of us who appreciate liberty and individual freedom are disgusted by the ideas of the left - so what is wrong with hating oppression and forced conformity?
Hate politics? You mean the endless smears and libels about Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Sean Hannity, or any other conservative who speak up?
Some of us are well-read on the politics of the left. In fact, I was actually raised and taught by leftists. There is no desire on the leftist side to treat the opposition with respect, decency, or kindness - and you insist that we need to respond that way? Sometimes the war is forced upon us, bud, and you can’t fight against people who desire your destruction with words and respect.
Let me put this in historical context. Would your opposition to slavery consist of kind words for the slave owners and traders? Would you treat Mao with the respect due any human being? Would it be hysterical and hatred to want to destroy the machinery which killed the Jews in World War II?
What you’re lacking is a passion for liberty and freedom. You’re apparently willing to play fair no matter what the circumstances are. That’s the recipe for suicide.
All is fair in love, war, and politics.
We should never relent on this president. He is scum plain and simple. This is the same person who fought hard to allow babies born alive to be throw in the waste bin out of convenience. This is the same scum that feels that once a person gets to a certain age their life becomes less worthy for medical procedures. Just take a pain pill. And this is the same scum that thinks he is better able to handle the economy than someone that has an actual functioning brain.
This guy is the epitome of the scum bag Democrat party, The destruction of his presidency and his reputation is imperative. We must show liberalism to be the morally and intellectual bankrupt philosophy that it is.
There should be an equivalent of Godwin’s Law that states sooner or later in any conversation concerning issues, Hitler or Nazism will be brought up. In any discussion where libs are allowed, racism will be brought up. It is their first and last resource.
Joan’s “projecting projection”.
All the racism, the outright hatefilled BIGOTRY,
is coming from the blacks on the left.
I’m sure she would call me a racist for pointing that out.
And when you’re talking to one that does so,
put up your hand and give them a loud “BZZZZZZT, FAIL!”
“Raising the race shield to deflect criticism shows your deficit of logical argument.
I’m hereby informing you that that tactic will no longer work to silence criticism.
Care to try again?”
Because there can’t be any more left-wing racists?
The racism started at the inauguration, when the “prayer” included the line “when white will embrace what is right.”
One of the most recent racist outbursts is from one of the New Black Panther defendants just allowed to walk by the black Attorney General. The unrepentant racist defendant stated:
I has waited all my life for the day that Strong Black men could stand outside a voting poll in a Honk neighborhood and beat republiKKKan voters with a baseball bat to keep the mother*#^*@%s from voting for they racist candidate and walk away scott free and be a hero in the Black community…..and that day finally here. It time we up the ante on these white mother*#^*@%s and take it to the next level.
So, Joan, you don’t detect any anti-White racism coming from this administration? Please.
Racialist is the term that is used for people like Walsh who see everything in terms of race.
I’m sure people like Joan would believe reacting to and preparing against quotes such as you posted
is racist.
Look for the day, like the quoted person states, that blacks are given license to commit violent crimes against “whitey” and it will be a “hate crime” to even complain.
It will come unless we do something about it.
I really enjoy the fact that a significant portion of the population around me would shoot or beat the snot out of me for a couple of bucks. If I didn't enjoy it so much, I guess I'd be a racist. I also enjoy having to carry a couple of extra pounds around with me. Wouldn't want to live in a place where my only concern about the outside was the weather. /S
False premise. Your argument fails.
Yeah, but it isn't memorable and doesn't fit the meme of "birther, truther, racer."
Just a little creativity with the english language, that's all.
I’ll give you points for creativity.
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