Posted on 10/19/2009 7:35:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Late last week, Democratic-leaning pollster Stan Greenberg released a focus group study showing that conservative GOP base voters live in an alternative universe of their own political paranoia. In this world, President Obama is ruthlessly advancing a secret agenda to ruin -- yes, ruin -- the economy so he can impose socialism upon the United States and destroy the core civil liberties of American democracy. And in this covert crusade, Obama is no more than a frontman for unseen interests aiming to annihilate the United States.
This dark view was propounded by die-hard right-wingers -- older, white Republican-base voters -- who participated in focus groups Greenberg conducted in Georgia. These people, who said they were part of a nascent resistance movement (which includes Fox News, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Parties), are committed to Obama's failure. But while Greenberg's report notes that these folks "stand a world apart from the rest of America," it also insists that race (that is, Obama's race) is "not what was bothering them about President Obama." This part of the report is headlined "Race: Get Over It."
I wonder if it's that simple. Greenberg reports that the conservatives in these focus groups did not explicitly express racial animus toward the president. They generally maintained that their opposition to Obama has nothing to do with race. But would they have such a conspiratorial and harsh take on Obama were he white?
It's not just Obama's policies that these conservatives suspect; they believe he's not real -- on two significant levels. First, they claim that questions remain about his origins, including his birth. Second, they told Greenberg's researchers that there was something nefarious about Obama's rise to power -- that there was no way a former community organizer could reach the White House on his own merits. These conservatives believe Obama was placed in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. by forces intent on wiping out the United States they know and love.
For them, Obama is an unqualified puppet who represents the "other" -- and is doing the bidding of his evil overlords. That's both nutty and condescending.
Does the color of Obama's skin make it easier for conservatives to view Obama in this manner? It may be impossible to get an honest answer to that query. Certainly, it's possible that devotees of The Obama Code would possess the same fear of a white president pushing similar policies. Some on the fringe right in the 1990s did suggest that Bill Clinton was a Manchurian Candidate for the Russians. Others depicted him as a devious politician doing the dirty work for his revolutionary Marxist wife (yeah, right!) and capable of killing anyone who stood in their way.
But the anti-Obama sentiment of today appears deeper and wider -- and even more untethered from reality. Consider a recent poll taken of Tennesseans. Nearly half (47 percent) of the state's Republicans said Obama was born in another country (say, Kenya). The same amount of GOPers (48 percent) said that Obama was probably or definitely a secret Muslim. (About one-third of all Tennesseans held these beliefs.) Are these positions not shaped by race? After all, how many Southern GOPers would believe a left-of-center white politician who for years had attended Christian churches and whose birth was recorded by a state office and local newspapers was a secret Muslim who had been delivered in Africa?
These days, explicit racism is widely regarded as unacceptable. Yet it's quite possible that unsupported folly of this sort has become a stand-in for outright racial opposition. If a conservative can assert that the problem with Obama is that he fronts for a diabolical enemy within, is a secret Muslim, and has mounted a coverup to hide his birth in Africa, then this right-winger can tell himself (and focus group moderators) that his feelings about Obama aren't about race. But here's the question that needs asking: Why do conservatives -- especially Southern conservatives -- believe all this rot? (In 2000, a Daily Kos poll found that six times as many Southerners as Northeasterners believed Obama was not born in the United States.)
Ultimately, the reasons for conservative alienation and paranoia may not matter. Caused by race or not, this phenomenon will continue to pollute the national political discourse and vex Republican Party leaders, who must court these unhinged voters without turning off reality-based independents and reasonable Republicans. But when right-wingers, citing these particular false facts, say that Obama is a treacherous enemy of the state and literally the political anti-Christ, it may not yet be time to get over race.
******
By the way, on Friday night, I appeared on "Hardball" to discuss all this with Chris Matthews and Ron Brownstein:
(VIDEO AT LINK)
****
David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine. Prior to that he was the Washington editor of The Nation magazine for twenty years.
David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine
That says it all right there
The guy is delusional.
Because left wingers, esp the extreme type which Obama have surrounded himself with have history of growing government, and controlling the economy and people’s lives and silence those who disagree them with force of law. Look at Europe
Whether true or not, you couldn't tell the difference by looking at 0bummer's actions. So, one has to prepare.
Hah, he was the Washington editor of The Nation pretty much forever, THAT my good man is what says it all.
We also know and love David Corn as the one who “outed” Valerie Plame and then lied about it, going so far as to post-edit archived Nation articles to try to cover his tracks.
I remember the first time I saw David Corn. The guy freaked me out. He looks like something from Night of the Living Dead. Liberals have the corner on creepiness.
Actually, Obama is the latest in a long line of people trying to deliberately ruin this country. He’s just the emptiest of the empty suits pretending to want what is best for us.
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Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
BOO!
I remember when the MSM said the right was nuts for thinking Obman and Bill Ayers were friends... looks like Ayers wrote Dreams...
There is WAY more evidence that makes a far more compelling case for this, then the leftist fantasy that George Bush set off a controlled demolition to bring down the WTC and a missle hit the Pentagon.
Who wrote "Dreams of My Father" and what are his stated goals? Who has surrounded himself with proud uncloseted Marxists and communists? Who has openly spoken at the UN about lessening the power of the US so as to bring it down the level of lesser nations? Who has run up more debt in ten months than all other US presidents combined did in over 200 years?
These aren't mystical subtle clues to what he may be up to, it's an effing neon sign with a horn section surrounded by dancing bears in "Yes we can destroy the nation!" t-shirts!
David Corn should read more and write less.
Why are the lefties so friggin’ concern about the right? Why should they care? It seems that nearly every week, the lefties send anthropologists out to try to figure out conservative America. The problem is, the go out with their answers in hand. Their answers never change. I’ve been reading these articles for decades. It’s always the same. Don’t they read their own stuff they put out? Jeesh.
It’s not a secret plan, he’s doing it out in the open.
As with most liberals, a little things like sex perversion is what politically motivates David Corn at the gut level.
A decadent population cannot live under our existing constitution.
Moral decay always produces tyranny.
If he were white, he wouldn't be president.
EXACTLY the same reaction the first time I saw David Corn.
EVIL personified was what I thought.
That was, of course, before I saw Obama and his horde of Comrades. (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Valerie Jarrett)
I’m in.
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