It is absolutely hilarious the uniform reactions I’m hearing from the Republican punditry. It’s almost like hearing a talking wind-up doll, pull the string and listen to some pissed off Rightie Wightie loud mouth regurgitate a line on how Obama failed to reach the lower class White vote. It usually comes out sounding something like this:
“While Obama’s speech was very ELOQUENT, he failed to change the minds of middle-class White people.â€
Nothing TOO shocking, however let’s examine this a little closer.
Firstly, even the compliment is designed to be an insult. After the infamous Joe Biden debacle, in which Biden called Obama “articulate,” it became widely known to White Righties that African-American men see such comments as an attempt to put them in a second-class bracket (oh he speaks so well… for a black guy). By the way, articulate is the third word for eloquent in the thesaurus, This is not apples and oranges, especially since Republicans are so obsessive about semantics.
Secondly… Where do they get off thinking they know what middle and working class people are thinking?! Most of these Right-Wing Pundicrats have never suffered a day in their life, never had to worry about putting food on the table, having had everything handed to them from the elite insider world they love to pretend they are not a part of so much. They may come off like populists, however, lets face it, they’re not. What’s even more sad, is that guys like Rush or Coulter or Hannity or your average fill in the blank conservative moron, make their living by dividing white middle class people against blacks, gays, immigrants, communists (rich people hate an anti-capitalist system? Get out of here), socialists, liberals, the lower class in general and just about anyone that stands in their way (which is the operative term here). Meanwhile they support a system that makes those same middle class people who believe in their bag of tricks less wealthy, and the poor, we’ll their attitude on the poor seems to be nothing more than “let em rot.”
When you get to the nitty gritty with a conservative, they spew some nonsense like:
If I can take the $200,000 a year allowance from my dad and build a business from the ground up, why can’t poor ghetto urban youth do it as well? It’s their own fault that they’re poor. They don’t deserve to be rich because they are intended to be lower on the food chain, someone has to. More importantly, I deserve to be where I am.
While I exaggerate, I’m not exaggerating with any great enthusiasm. Too many people I’ve respected came at me with this kind of BS and I had to throw said respect in the garbage disposal. The rich always cry a river about all the people they had to step on, then have a pre-fabricated story of their own meteoric rise to greatness. It happens at even the lowest levels of power, like a security guard taken with his new found authority. Someone, give these guys a mirror please!
The upper echelons are a different beast. A pragmatic view of power and the nature of power comes into play. The truly powerful know how to stay in power. I’m often reminded of the movie Braveheart, the way the King Edward Longshanks was so successful at dividing the Scottish Nobles against themselves, while Robert the Bruce was able to use this to his advantage. This is TRUE power. The guys at the top are not loyal or moral or even descent, yet some are better than others. These modern Republicans are nothing more than masters of stirring up hate and resentment to distract people from the fact that when they leave 20 more are waiting to fill their place. They cling to power by keeping us simple minded folk occupied with hatred.
This, in essence, is the Republican Hate Machine. A vast array of sophisticated excuses, rationalizations and ultimately, anger directed at the rest of society, I believe, transfixed by their own self-disgust. They claim they “know” the people they have never had any real contact with, which is as good an act as any (perhaps the reason it took Reagan to lead them). It’s the grand defense they’ll cling to (till it stops working) that simultaneously uses and butchers The American Dream for the sake of profit.
Their recent remarks however, reveal their own ignorance of the very people they claim to know. The average, independent voter in Pennsylvania could give a rats ass about race as a political issue. What is this, 1900? This simply does not work like it used to. There are many among the older & even middle generations that are still vulnerable. However, while people are pissed off about affirmative action and immigration (mainly stirred up by the Republican Hate Machine), this pails in comparison to the Economy, Iraq, Health Care and other, far more pressing and tangible issues. In other words, I do not see this panning out beyond Easter.
A recent show on NPR interviewed a cross section of “White†independent voters and that’s exactly what they said. The working class white “Reagan Democrat†swing voter on the panel was so fed up with Republican economic principles, that he really didn’t care all that much about race as an issue. He actually said he and most of his comrades in labor were primarily looking at Democrats, regardless of race, and not really taking McCain all that seriously.
Let’s be nice and crystal clear what this Obama race issue is REALLY about. It’s not the serious and utmost concern of a populace worried that some off-key remarks made by a Presidential Candidate’s FORMER preacher reveal a secret hatred of White Americans the actual Presidential Candidate may hold. This is distraction politics of an incredibly sophisticated nature. The Republican Hate Machine is back to it’s old tricks, now with even MORE help from the 24 hour news channels, primarily FOX. Sean Hannity, for instance, has been all over this & other race related stories like this tirade on the racial beliefs of Michelle Obama. Plus we need to remember that before the Wall Street Journal (a traditionally conservative paper, now falling into the hands of FOX), broke the story, it came pre-fabbed out of the phony Right-Wing news front “NewsMax.”here ‘s the guy, Ronald Kessler, bragging about his achievements. What a maroon). Plus a a McCain aide was liked to the debacle, and McCain suspended the poor patsy. This resonates downward from higher up thinktanks down to the mindless drones like Rush, who are simply filling their air time with the same thing they always do, hot air. I mean, these shills are practically entertainment at this point, in the same way Howard Stern is. I hear conservatives who listen to Rush or Hannity persistently laugh when describing a RashLimburger comment. They may take these whack jobs with a grain of salt, unfortunately, they still have an agenda. An agenda that is destructive to the social fabric of this great nation. They seek to not only divide the Left, in hopes of pulling off conservative victories, they do it by doing what they do best, divide America.
I’m hoping America has finally awakened and there are encouraging signs that this may be.
I heard a conservative preacher say that folks on the Right would not put too much stock into this issue because they’re so used to their own fiery Southern pulpits and crazy statements made by their own firebrand preachers (remember that Falwell and Robertson said gays were responsible for 9-11). I’ve heard a large majority of praise from average Joes and Janes as well. With the only loud criticism I hear coming from the 24 hour news networks, in some sort of desperate search for a narrative. This “search” results in the Conservative punditry, you know, some pissed off enormously wealthy White person, rambling on about race with the same tired lines they borrowed from the same tired Washington insiders who said it an hour earlier somewhere else. They always have all the answers, yet nothing ever changes, it just gets worse than they blame someone else. It’s just the same damn thing over and over and I’m just so bored with it, aren’t you?
The one thing Conservatives just don’t get is that they can’t win on race like they used to. Those days are long over. Who could forget Trent Lott destroying his career for simply saying racist hate monger, Strom Thurmond (remember, the guy who ran against Truman for desegregating the U.S. Army, even though he was fostering a black child out of wedlock), should have been elected President. Ever since, the Right has whined and moaned about the agents of intolerance being the REAL ones who are intolerant, lol, yeah, intolerant alright, verbally intolerant of ignorance and racism.
LOL- Oh poor racist rich white people, we all know how hard you have it! If only you could use the N-word in public again. Please right-wing shock jocks, go to the Crenshaw Strip in South Central L.A. and say the N-Word, PLEASE! I dare you, I double dog dare you! I’m willing to bet no one will call you intolerant. We will, however, have to find a new racist rich Anglo to fill your meaningless existance.
Meanwhile, those same whinny babies like Anne “the Clan†Coulter and Rush “to Judgment†Limbaugh are finally beginning to decline in influence. As their politics of distraction offers Americans little else but more distraction. They have become detached and removed from the very people they claim to represent and it will take a hell of a lot more than this to bring Obama down.
If anything, much like the NY Times piss poor ad on McCain’s lobbyist affair, this issue will galvanize the Left, with the vast majority of middle of the roaders seeing it as nothing more than a bunch of pissed off rich Republicans trying to divide Democrats with the only weapon they have left. Racism is outdated, and desperate I might add.
Also the media is finally beginning to move elsewhere. There are new scandals involving the state department looking for dirt in Obama’s passport file, problems in Iraq again (Almost 4000 of our nation’s finest young men and women sacrificed for this war), an endorsement of Obama from the Bill Richardson campaign, and the chief issue that will come to dominate this election, the economy, is not doing so well for the other side.
No I’d say the economy is not the only thing looking pretty weak right now, the Right Wing is facing a similar catastrophe. They’re most hated ally is their official nominee for President. Unfortunately, McCain is the only hope they got and they’ll fight to the end. Yet McCain is not up to this election. He’s older than Reagan was by a mentionable amount. He looks tired, making gaffes like saying Iran was helping Al Qaadea, which Joe Lieberman of all people, standing by his side at the time whispered in his ear to correct the horrendous gaffe. Poor old fool, he’s been given the best and worst honor of his career. He’ll be the bright shinning example of why the Republicans need to go EVEN FURTHER to the Right (although that would be actual fascism as opposed to the quasi-fascism they preach today).
I honestly believe the Republicans staged this race event and quite well to boot. It’s dirty, Karl Rove-esque politics at it’s absolute grimiest. They tried to make Hillary look more viable, especially since they would prefer to run against a symbol they’ve spent 15 years bashing and labeling, the champion of Liberal cause they’ll say. If Obama still wins, they not only branded him with a future talking point, they dragged out a lot of dirty laundry they hope will foster a negative image. It looks like they failed this time to destroy the competition, however it is a grim reminder that the Republicans will stoop to any level to cling to power. There is more to come, BELIEVE ME! You haven’t seen nuthin yet! I mean, come on, if they’ll start a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people to cling to the White House, they’re certainly capable of calling Obama the N’ word, even if they have to go to the Thesaurus to do it. It’s happened before (lookup: Southern Strategy in Wikipedia)
It’s time to mobilize. Hillary supporters need to face facts that Hillary has very little chance to come up on top at this point. There are polls that show Hillary ahead in ONE national poll that was taken before Obama’s speech. This is not only meaningless, it’s not reality. Some polls even show McCain winning. Oh come now! This is like taking a poll on who will win the Super Bowl, it means nothing and speculating is as useful as Monday morning quarterbacking. Until that opening coin is tossed and the ball is kicked, you can talk from sunrise to sunset and it won’t change a damn thing.
It’s time to come together around our candidate and crush the Republican Hate Machine once and for all. The Dems are the party of the people, let’s bring that party back to reality and away from the corporate conservatism that has consumed and ruined this country. After all, Nixon is farther to the left than BOTH Democratic candidates (ie: Clean Air Act, proposal on National Health Care, Liberal Economic theories) what the hell has happened? We need to wake up and vote for a strategic shift, away from these fringe Right-Wing nutjobs and toward a sensible Center-Left position. Historically, we in the other 99% (as opposed to the top 1% that has all the wealth) do far better with Democrats in office. As the famous statement goes:
If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat!
Obama is emerging from this mess stronger and re-energized. The Right can say all they want to the contrary and even claim they have telekinetic powers that can not only predict, but actually know what people are thinking right now, it still won’t save them from the reality that have created for the 290 Million American taxpayers who will suffer as a direct result of their catastrophic fumbles. Then again, reality isn’t something that Republicans are very good with.
