Every Time You Go Tieless, The Terrorists Win
The professional right wing must be terrified of Barack Obama. First they began pointing out that his middle name is "Hussein," and now there's this utter idiocy. I swear to god, we need a new Godwin's Law that says, "If you compare your opponent to al-Qaeda, you get your mike cut off."
And yet---every time they do these obviously crazy and deesperate smears against a guy who's widely loved, aren't they really hurting themselves? Bush's approval rating is 30% and almost guaranteed to slide lower when people realize he's ignoring the Iraq Study Group---the last figleaf he had---and continuing our present course. (Tony Snow has done nothing all week except downplay the report's importance.) Approval for the Iraq war is 21% and also liable to plummet. So when the Republican Noise Machine tries to say "Barack Obama dresses like at least one known terrorist and has a scary Middle Eastern name!" I have a feeling they're just making themselves look very out of touch. That shit worked on Kerry---you could look at him and think, "God, he's uncomfortable. Is he hiding something?" But two years ahead of time, the Republican chattering class seems to be literally running this Presidential campaign (and the preemptive strikes against Dem opponents) as if The War on Terror = Iraq is still a winning sales pitch. It's idiotic, Colonial-era slander and innuendo, and I hope they fry for it.
And yet---every time they do these obviously crazy and deesperate smears against a guy who's widely loved, aren't they really hurting themselves? Bush's approval rating is 30% and almost guaranteed to slide lower when people realize he's ignoring the Iraq Study Group---the last figleaf he had---and continuing our present course. (Tony Snow has done nothing all week except downplay the report's importance.) Approval for the Iraq war is 21% and also liable to plummet. So when the Republican Noise Machine tries to say "Barack Obama dresses like at least one known terrorist and has a scary Middle Eastern name!" I have a feeling they're just making themselves look very out of touch. That shit worked on Kerry---you could look at him and think, "God, he's uncomfortable. Is he hiding something?" But two years ahead of time, the Republican chattering class seems to be literally running this Presidential campaign (and the preemptive strikes against Dem opponents) as if The War on Terror = Iraq is still a winning sales pitch. It's idiotic, Colonial-era slander and innuendo, and I hope they fry for it.
Labels: current events
posted by Cowboy Dave Dickerson | 6:40 AM
2 Comments:
Those were some fantastic and profoundly weird comments Jeff Greenfield made. But don't they have to be repeated more than once, and by somebody else, before they get attributed to the entire right wing?
I read the National Review's blog "The Corner." The contributors there are definitely worried about Obama, and they have plenty of things to say about him. But not one of them has commented on his state of dress. They're focused, correctly, on his politics.
I wasn't attempting to tar the entire right wing so much as the Noise Machine folks who are usually the first to float the potential talking points. I was hoping to bring it to light in the hope of nipping it in the bud. The Clinton-Murdered-Vince-Foster meme started the same way, and got way more traction than it deserved as a result. Ditto the Swift Boats.
Also, I feel I should point out that it's not just Jeff Greenfield---though he seems to be the most eager to repeat Obama-Osama connections he gets from elsewhere. And the move from "Hussein is his middle name" to "he dresses like a terrorist, too" (in an article that also mentions his middle name) suggests a snowballing that I find very troubling.
If this meme doesn't spread, and if it isn't enabled by CNN, ABC, and MSNBC, I'll happily retire the objection. But ever since I saw the baffling success of the Swift Boaters---who simply made shit up and were treated by the press as if they deserved 50% of the airtime--I no longer feel safe hoping that mean-spirited ideas will die a natural death.
And as I said, this sort of talk can't actually be helping the conservative cause. If someone at the Corner takes on Greenfield onthis basis, let me know.
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