(Community Matters) Violence from the Right. In my mind it’s even scarier than it appears.
From Three Blue Dudes:
Paul Krugman writes something that’s been on my mind lately: That as ugly as GOP rhetoric is right now, it will be even uglier if Obama wins the general election and becomes President of the United States.
What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have settled that once and for all.
What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.
The next few years are going to be very, very tough.
I think that’s exactly correct. It is easy to forget how crazed and unhinged the Right was about the Clintons and the things they said and did to destroy him, including impeaching a popular and successful president. It will be worse with Obama and there is no reason to believe that the media, which outrageously lent credence to even the most preposterous anti-Clinton conspiracy theories, has learned anything at all. Most likely, they will entertain the new anti-Obama conspiracy theories [mostly just recycled anti-Clinton theories] just as eagerly.
When Easter 2009 rolls around, we’ll hear that Obama wants to cancel the Easter Egg Roll at the White House because he hates Baby Jesus. A year from now, we’ll be told that Christmas has been cancelled at the White House, but Ramadan is mandatory for all federal employees. And that’ll be the mild stuff. Wait until we hear about all of Obama’s white bastard children — race-mixing being a particular bugbear for the American Right.
It will get ugly. Don’t fool yourself.
In January I wrote about James Dobson, radio broadcaster and founder of Focus on the Family, and his tendency to refer to Bill Clinton’s administration as a regime because he felt moral issues prevented him from supporting a Clinton administration. He went so far as to question how long “Christain” Americans could support an immoral regime. This is real stuff. (never mind that Dobson is a hypocrit and argued against investigation of Republican congressional influence in any coverups related to Mark Foley).
In fact, powerful political interests misinform and stoke fear in many people off-balance and scared because of change, economic & political balance-of-power threats. You’ve seen Palin and McCain incite xenophobic and nationalistic anger bordering on violence among some supporters. Already, Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffe has withdrawn his support for the McCain/Palin ticket out of concern. Former Michigan Republican Governor Millken has similar withdrawn his support of McCain and for the same reasons. Let’s hope more honorable Republicans stand up against this wave of resurrection.
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