Fear of a Black Radical
After four years of trying their damnedest to portray the solidly centrist Barack Obama as a dangerous radical commie, the constant meme from the right now is that he’s just been hiding that radicalism until now — but if he gets a second term, he’ll appoint the ghost of Che Guevera as czar of everything. Steve Chapman laughs at that claim:
The critics seem to think that after this year, Obama will be free to liberate his inner radical and turn the United States into a more hellish version of North Korea. This scenario glosses over the president’s cautious temperament and aversion to liberal crusading, which often cause Rachel Maddow to grind her teeth.
The doomsayers also assume that someone shrewd, unthreatening and adaptable enough to become the first black president would, at the age of 51, metamorphose into Huey Newton. It’s about as plausible as Santorum undergoing a sex change or Newt Gingrich taking a vow of silence.
How can conservatives forget that Obama is a consummate politician who has never taken the path of high risk? The radical steps they expect would antagonize the vast majority of the electorate and banish his party from power for decades. No president would deliberately do that.
Thiessen apparently imagines that Obama will mothball the Pacific Fleet and melt down our nuclear missiles for scrap. Never mind that under him, defense spending has been higher, adjusted for inflation, than at any time under George W. Bush. It’s also higher than the budgets of the next 17 countries combined. Obama’s planned trims would be like taking a couple of feet off the Empire State Building.
It’s all about otherizing Obama. They don’t really believe any of this stuff, but it’s a damn good way to separate fools from their money.
John Hinkle:
April 9th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Ha ha, excellent!
hinschelwood:
April 9th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Unthinkable, surely? Perhaps this is the mentality that prevents defence cuts?
fastlane:
April 9th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
John Hinkle beat me to pointing out the money quote. That’s a sneaky little bit of awesome there.
robertbaden:
April 9th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
“would antagonize the vast majority of the electorate and banish his party from power for decades. No president would deliberately do that.”
LBJ pushing civil rights legislation and losing the South to the Republicans?
Lou Doench:
April 9th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
The really sad thing is that even if Obama was the kind of president Professor Maddow and myself wished he would be, the far right wing that dominates the Republican party at the moment would never recognize him as such. They have a completely baseless straw man constructed that bears no relationship to anything us liberals actually want the prez to do.
Driftglass explains it well here.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/04/7-year-blogiversary-fundraiser-day-four.html
Who Knows?:
April 9th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Well, the right has quite a bit invested in the black man as the source of so many problems. It’s got to be really tough for them to see a successful black person that is not a conservative yes man, and the President of the United States.
People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are such easy targets. I guess rguing that President Obama is an undercover black Muslim radical, in spite of all the evidence against it, is about the only thing they have on him.
If President Obama isn’t a closet black radical, people might get the idea that skin color doesn’t matter and the centuries of fear mongering is nothing more than a load of crap.
machintelligence:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
I rather like his ending tag line:
LightningRose:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Actually, I could see Rick Santorum transitioning. He wouldn’t be the first rabidly anti-queer to do so.
Many years ago I was acquainted with a formerly Mormon MTF transsexual who was borderline suicidal because her adult kids all shunned and rejected her (as per Mormon doctrine). I bit my tongue, but what I wanted to do was give her a good slap and say, “You raised your kids to be delusional queer-phobic bigots. What in hell did you expect them to do?”
ashleybell:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Yeah, what Lou said at #5. They’ve already got the insane rhetoric turned up to 11. Obama has plently of leeway to go hard left in his next term, they’ve got no room for any more volume. It’s not like the right has any idea how to criticise him for his ACTUAL foibles
bksea:
April 9th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
How do we know Santorum hasn’t already had a sex change? I think he is a stealth feminazi masquerading as a male, right wing blow hard so that he can get elected and implement a radical feminist agenda. Why else would anyone say such stupid, misogynistic things?
harold:
April 9th, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Wait – somebody thinks it’s implausible that Rick Santorum is closeted or secretly gender confused?
(This comment not intended to be homophobic, and most certainly not intended to imply that gay people in general resemble Rick Santorum. This comment does imply that closeted males who attempt to conform to officially homophobic authoritarian systems may experience severe psychological consequences. I stand by that, unless someone presents convincing empirical evidence to the contrary.)
tacitus:
April 9th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Because it is not in their own interests to remember.
Aliasalpha:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:37 pm
Obama could host a weekly “tips for cooking babies” show and make a campaign promise to murder anyone who’s name begins with D and he’d still be more electable than any of the republican options
StevoR:
April 10th, 2012 at 5:32 am
@ ^ Aliasalpha : That’s hyperbole – but only just!
StevoR:
April 10th, 2012 at 5:35 am
@12.tacitus :
I’m not so sure ’bout that. I’d have said running for President as an African-American male with aname like Bracak Hussein Obama was itself a pretty durn high-risk choice!
StevoR:
April 10th, 2012 at 5:38 am
PS. I don’t know what Obama will do in his second term but I’m guessing we’ll find out at the end of this year and over the next two.
I had very high hopes for him when he was first elected.
I feel very badly let down by him.
I expected him to do alot better & be alot more pro-science and pro-space exploration. I did NOT expect him to axe the Ares-Constellation human lunar return program or leave NASA in the mess it is now in.
But out of the evils on option he seems about the lesser especially now its down to him versus Mittens.