Obama '08?

There could be horrible consequences for this kind of political carelessness. While villinizing Obama to get support, they are fueling a animosity which I don't think they can control if they lose... if they care to.

T
K
O

Please everyone read this, from an Op-Ed by Bob Herbert. I would be interested to hear replies from thoughtful conservatives like Finn, about Herbert's take on the effects of the policies of the right...


The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.

Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.

Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It’s not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan " the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 " has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

I don’t for a moment think that the Democratic Party has been free of egregious problems. But there are two things I find remarkable about the G.O.P., and especially its more conservative wing, which is now about all there is.

The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.

Remember voodoo economics? That was the derisive term George H.W. Bush used for Ronald Reagan’s fantasy that he could simultaneously increase defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. After Reagan became president (with Mr. Bush as his vice president) the budget deficit " surprise, surprise " soared.

In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan’s own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president’s tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.

These were the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives who were behaving so profligately. The budget was balanced and a surplus realized under Bill Clinton, but soon the “fiscal conservatives” were back in the driver’s seat. “Deficits don’t matter,” said Dick Cheney, and the wildest, most reckless of economic rides was on.

Americans, including the Joe Sixpacks, soccer moms and hockey moms, were repeatedly told that the benefits lavished on the highfliers would trickle down to them. Someday.

Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the discoverers of the link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion, Tom DeLay, a Republican who would go on to wield enormous power as majority leader in the House, mocked the award as the “Nobel Appeasement Prize.”

Mr. Reagan, the ultimate political hero of so many Republicans, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation ruling, William F. Buckley, the ultimate intellectual hero of so many Republicans, asserted that whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks.

“The White community is so entitled,” he wrote, “because, for the time being, it is the advanced race...” He would later repudiate that sentiment, but only after it was clear that his racist view was harmful to himself.

The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future.

Mr. Herbert usually has his finger right on the pulse.

Sure enough-- although the only people likely to even Read this are people who will vote for Obama.

Evangelicals will vote their religious interests before their economic interests.

They have already created the atmosphere of hate and violence; there is no way for them to reverse that - even after the elections. Conservatives are blind to that fact about normalizing hate and violence in our country.

My daily "huh?" from the New York Times (reporting, not Op-Ed: Patrick Healy. He and Adam Nagourney are frequent "huh?" offenders):



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13race.html

Emphasis mine.

What about, ya know, Obama's HUGE speech on the subject? Can you get more direct or full-throated than that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/

Meanwhile...

22 days to go!

that is a real hunh?! does he not read the NYT other than his own work?

McCain/Palin has been successful in-planting those lies and innuendos into the minds of those already tended towards racial bigotry. Remember that woman who thought Obama was Arab? There are many like her who really do not know Obama, and can conjure up all the negatives in their own minds.

Yeah, but the thing about that woman with the "Arab" comment at the rally, and others like her, is that they are about 90% already decided to believe the worst about Obama. They don't need any lies planted.

It is still amazing to me what I hear some white people saying about Obama - sans any basis, outside of some virulent emails and blogs.

All Palin and (to a lesser degree) McCain have done is help create an atmosphere where those kinds of people are allowed to feel a little more comfortable with their biases. All that "He's not like you and me" talk has consequences.

But that is the point isn't it? That they feel "more comfortable" with their ignorance in a crowd the supports their ignorance. You can bet your bottom dollar that's how they talk to their family and friends with like-thinking bigots.

And I don't suppose jokes about Todd Palin committing incest constitutes ignorance and bigotry, do you ci?

The difference here is Obama often takes the opportunities to remind everyone that he does not look like everyone, so he plants the seeds of the racism angle, so that in the event that he should lose he can then blame it on racism.

Huh?

I guess I haven't seen anyone raise that at an Obama rally. Incest you say? Did Fox report that as "some are saying?"

"some people say"

Have you seen "Out Foxed" by chance parados? That's my favorite segment.

T
K
O

I heard the funniest thing today. They say Obama recruited Palin for McCain.
You can't deny it's working like a charm.

No, I think I saw it speculated on Daily Kos, and I think its been repeated by liberal comedians. I rarely check out Daily Kos, but I admit to doing it shortly after Palin was picked to see what the lefties were plotting in regard to her. Daily Kos is of course the whacked out leftie blog that is somehow considered mainstream enough by many leading Democrats that they attend conventions with them. If you get your news from Daily Kos, Parados, that could explain your utter confusion.

He might be considered weak because of the lack of gubernatorial experience. But racism is a pretty shallow reason for not considering him.

Racism is only a shallow reason if you aren't racist.

You are grasping at straws Okie. As parados pointed out, this wasn't happening at a Obama events etc.

I don't think McCain or Palin are to blame for what people say at their rallies, I think however, that inaction is unforgivable when it does happen. I think McCain is getting disgusted with his own campaign, and it was very good of him to snatch the mic out of that woman's hands when she started to rant about him being an Arab.

It's getting out of control, and I give McCain the benefit of the doubt that this is not where his campaign told him this would go, but now that it's here, it's certainly his to have to deal with in dignity and pragmatically.

These mobs are hurting McCain and the rest of the republicans running as well. I'm alarmed, but not worried--yet. If this continues to escalate, I will be seriously worried about what people may do.

T
K
O

T
K
O

Exactly TKO. I saw a perfect example of how easy it would be for Palin and McCain to squelch the mobs at their campaigns, and Obama provided the example.
He was speaking in Ohio Monday, and at the mention of McCain, some of the crowd started booing. Obama immediately said "We dont need that." Then he began to complete the sentence he had started, paused to say"We just need to vote", and then completed his sentence. The crowd followed his lead seamlessly. Ugliness averted without even losing his train of thought.
It would be that easy for McCain and Palin to stop those ugly sentiments from coming out of their crowds, if they did not actually intend to encourage it.

Now you are not making any sense okie.. I have not heard that one. You saw it on Daily Kos so you expect I would be confused and not have seen it if I get my news from Daily Kos? Have you completely lost your mind?

Oh.. wait. you get your news from Hannity. That would be the RW hack that is somehow considered mainstream by so many leading conservatives that they attend conventions with him, and Limbaugh, and Michael Savage, and OReilly.......

I prefer to get my news from the actual news media. None of them have reported anyone at an Obama rally bringing up incest by Palin's family. I don't think you can reasonably compare idiotic statements on a website to statements to a candidate at a rally. In one instance it is anonymous and the candidate has no ability to respond. In the other the candidate should take the responsibility to set the record straight.