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"Off With His Head!"
"OFF WITH HIS HEAD!"....Steve Benen describes the ugliness of the Republican Party's recent rallies and campaign events:
The McCain campaign has deliberately been whipping the angry, far-right Republican base into a frenzy. That includes increasing frequency of "Hussein" references, but it also includes looking the other way while campaign supporters exclaim "treason!," "terrorist!," and "kill him!" during official rallies.
On Wednesday, during a McCain harangue against Obama, one man could be heard yelling, "Off with his head!" On Thursday, Republicans erupted when an unhinged McCain supporter ranted about "socialists taking over our country." Instead of calming them down, McCain said the lunatic was "right."....Slate's John Dickerson described the participants' "bloodthirsty" tone.
The danger here is not mobs of violent Republicans marching through the streets. The danger is that John McCain is setting us up for a repeat of the 90s, an era that conservatives to this day have never been willing to come to grips with. If the looney-bin right decides to treat President Obama as not just an opposition leader, but as a virtual enemy of the state, as they did with Bill Clinton, it's going to be a very, very long eight years. Whatever grownups are left in conservative-land really need to step up to the plate soon before their movement goes even further off the rails than it already is.
JONAH GOLDBERG, defending McCain from Buckley, ladies and gentlemen:
He thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain's recent political performance. But even if you think McCain has run a less than honorable campaign (I do not ? which is not to say that I think he's run a particularly good campaign), it's hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for ? and greatly admires ? George HW Bush.
JONAH GOLDBERG, defending McCain from Buckley, ladies and gentlemen:
He thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain's recent political performance. But even if you think McCain has run a less than honorable campaign (I do not ? which is not to say that I think he's run a particularly good campaign), it's hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for ? and greatly admires ? George HW Bush.
The terrorists won.
>Whatever grownups are left in conservative-land really need to step up to the plate...
Will not happen. They're either cowed by the violent loonies, or they'll stick their fingers in their ears and sing LALALALALALALA while bemoaning those mean mean MoveOn.com ads.
what grownups? The GOP is all out of them. If they had some they might not be supporting mccain for president. Any gop member or conservative who is still backing mccain after his absurd descent into smear land is clearly not an adult. none of them are breaking rank and they all support mccain despite the clear evidence he has gone off the rails. think about the argument here, a return to the 90's by the grown up leaders of the gop. what new leaders do they have that were not more than happy to rail against clinton back then?
Heck, I suspect the loony right will treat President Obama far worse than Clinton. Consider
-- Obama's margin of victory is likely to be lower than Clinton's.
-- Clinton was more centrist than Obama
-- There are actually crucial issues now -- the financial crisis, Afghanistan, iraq etc. that the right thinks their man can handle better. None at the begining of the Clinton years.
-- And lets face it, the loony right, and even lots of the not-so loony right can't stand having an African American as President.
Whatever grownups are left in conservative-land really need to step up to the plate
Fat chance. That rabble is who they can rely on for votes. What good is your dignity if you're out of power, right? And after all, power's all that matters here.
The closest thing to a grown-up in the conservative movement is David Brooks. Nuff' said.
The danger here is not mobs of violent Republicans marching through the streets. The danger is that John McCain is setting us up for a repeat of the 90s, an era that conservatives to this day have never been willing to come to grips with.
I'm pretty sure this is backwards. The danger is that we will in fact see angry right-wingers attacking polling places on Election Day. Hopefully that's a remote danger, but it's a real one - it doesn't take a mob to cause harm, just one angry Republican with a gun.
It's a *certainty* that President Obama will be treated as an enemy of the state by Republicans. It's what they do, and we need to be prepared for it.
They may try the same stunts they did with Clinton, but that doesn't mean we have to stand for them and roll over like we did last time.
I for one am ready to get in their face and fight back. If we don't we risk 8 more years like the last ones.
Times are very, very different than in the Clinton years. Barack Obama, a young African American man with a funny sounding name is crushing a war hero and a middle name of "Hussein" is crushing the war hero candidate in all areas of the country, from the cities to the sticks. Stepping back, I can hardly believe it is happening.
The Republicans can go the Clinton route, and lose this time and again in '10, and they can just keep on losing, for all I care. But I think Americans have had it with this schtick.
Ack, I should have proofread my post.
My point: Obama is awesome, Republicans suck.
Thx
Whatever grownups are left in conservative-land really need to step up to the plate soon before their movement goes even further off the rails than it already is.Yeah, um, good luck with that plan.
The Dems and Obama need to remind people that the way they vote can have a real effect on their future economic well being.
The super rich are losing their grip on all the levers, losing control and losing power. A population that votes Democratic in 2008 can change the world for a while.
And if that happens, I can imagine various Democrats being uninvited to the Party because they just don't belong.
The danger is a return to the 90's? How about the danger is a return to 1968? Is still can see Bobby Kennedy bleeding out on the kitchen floor in that Los Angeles hotel. Somewhere is a character like this, thinking McCain and Palin are sending a signal for action:
Joseph Paul Franklin (born April 13, 1950) is an American serial killer who may have killed as many as 20 people between 1977 and 1980. He has been convicted of several murders, and has confessed to the attempted assassinations of two prominent people: the 1978 shooting of magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Flynt's attorney, and the 1980 shooting of Vernon Jordan. Franklin has not been convicted in either of those cases. Because Franklin has changed his story about some cases, the full extent of his crimes is uncertain.
Early life:
He was born James Clayton Vaughn in Mobile, Alabama, to a poor family. In 1976 he changed his name to Joseph Paul Franklin. He selected Joseph Paul in honor of Paul Joseph Goebbels and Franklin after Benjamin Franklin.
An Evangelical Christian,[1] Franklin is believed to have been abused, as a child, by both of his parents. As early as high school he had become very interested in Nazism and later held memberships in both the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. He also has one daughter from a 1968 marriage.
Franklin was a drifter, roaming up and down the East Coast, always looking for chances to "cleanse the world" of people he considered inferior, especially blacks and Jews.
The right is gonna be so pissed when they lose (and lose big in the House and Senate, too).
This is where Obama's thoughtful style will come in play. He'll do lots of television between Election Day & Inauguration and be a calm presence.
Of course, that won't stop the nutty nuts from blaming him for the financial crisis, etc, etc. But, what can you do?
Most conservative pundits wanna keep their jobs so they'll continue slobbering & braying & whining & lying.
I agree w/ Duvall. This is approaching the far right's demonization of doctors who work in family planning clinics. We saw where that ended up. The point is to whip up the rhetoric, knowing full well that one of the thin-skulled idiots at the rally will carry things to the logical conclusion. When it happens, the wingnuts who stoked the fire will say: who could have known?
This will be FAR worse than the 90s. I promise you.
"If the looney-bin right decides to treat President Obama as not just an opposition leader, but as a virtual enemy of the state"
Zzzzzz. Replace "right" with "left" and "Obama" with "Bush", and you get the last 8 years.
The loony-bin right is no different than the loony-bin left. Accusations of "treason" by the right against Obama are no different than the accusations of "treason" against Bush by the left. The Republicans introduced an impeachment resolution against Clinton. The Democrats introduced an impeachment resolution against Bush.
Kevin's idea that the next 8 years should be any different than the prior 8, or the 8 before that, is lunatic.
No, it won't.
Obama doesn't have Clinton's personal flaws, and he is altogether a different kind of leader, looking at a very different set of problems.
The very SIZE of the economic crisis presents him with opportunities to marginalize these knuckleheads that will make Clinton's failures into footnotes.
I guess I missed the Kevin Drum posts where he pointed out that constant references to Bushitler or Chimpy, calls for impeachment or war crimes trials for Bush administration members, etc., were having a negative effect on the governance of the country. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, I say.
It isn't like the 90s were so bad for the Republicans: they took and held control of Congress and ended up winning the next presidential election. So long as this sort of smashmouth politics works, people will keep doing it.
y81,
Do you not understand the difference between cries of "Impeach him!" and cries of "Kill him?"
Jack wrote: "Accusations of "treason" by the right against Obama are no different than the accusations of "treason" against Bush by the left."
Bullshit.
Obama did not lead the USA into a long-planned war of aggression against Iraq, for corrupt purposes of private financial gain, with deliberate, elaborate, repeated, sickening lies about nonexistent "Iraqi WMD" and nonexistent "links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein."
Obama did not authorize torture.
Obama did not fire career Federal prosecutors because they refused to participate in bogus, politically-motivated prosecutions of Democrats.
Obama did not authorize illegal warrantless wiretapping of the American people.
Go peddle your fake, phony, false-equivalency line of BS on Free Republic.
If you do, you may notice a difference between the "left" and the "right" -- namely, that commenters on Free Republic will threaten to KILL you for talking about the "looney-bin right". You won't get much of that from the "looney-bin left" people here.
The loony-bin right is no different than the loony-bin left. Accusations of "treason" by the right against Obama are no different than the accusations of "treason" against Bush by the left.
Holy fallacy of false equivalence Batman!
y81 also appears to have missed the Massive Fucking War on the People of Iraq.
You know why there are crazies out there comparing Bush to Hitler? Because both of them lied their nations into disastrous wars. Both of them wrecked their respective nations. Bush is responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives being lost.
Bush is objectively a very bad man. He isn't Hitler, but he has been a force for evil in our nation.
Can you make similar claims about Clinton? Not with any shred of honesty you cannot. The pathological hatred for Clinton by the y81s was based purely on sore-loserism. The distaste for Bush comes from his crony-based assumption of power and his corrupt and malign actions.
There's a difference between objective facts and paranoid idiocy. y81 would do well to learn that.
SecAm beat me to it, expansively!
Yeah, me too :-)
thersites, you are claiming that no commentator on this site has advocated capital punishment for Bush and Cheney, or fantasized about killing them?
I think Obama can handle this right wing nonsense better than any other Democrat. First of all, Bill sort of is a dirt bag with "questionable" character. So the right wing had a grain of truth to work with. He was also part of the 1960's left that was so fiercely hated. With Obama, the right wing swill just distills to vapors.
Obama is a genuine person AND skilled at politics. So I think he might be the person to finally put the nail in the right wing yakkers coffin simply by being a decent person with a loving family.
I actually think that is what the Whacked Right is afraid of. After all, the Noise Machine is a business first and foremost.
y81 - can you point to some? Come on, you are the one claiming equivalence here, you should have some evidence. Or are you just another idiot right-winger (oops, redundant phrase).
By the way, what is the appropriate punishment for someone whose actions directly and indirectly cause the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people?
I'm not too concerned. We're talking about a vocal but small group of people. And I think they're getting desparate because Obama has brought in an element of class war into the race. And many many many people feel they are on the losing end from the massive outsourcing of good-paying manufacturing jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree.
If you're like me and you can't afford extended cable, then you may watch cspan each morning and find that just about every day you get one or two callers who call up ranting about socialism and Obama's muslim roots. And the ironic thing is that they tend to have southern accents. These are the same people who think the sole qualification for being a patriot is serving in the military. They're close-minded, ignorant, and LOUD!
When is the Obama campaign going to forcefully point out that both this financial crisis, and the last one (Enron) we're partly created by one and the same man: Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm who was until a couple of months ago, McCain's economic advisor!!!??
y81 asks:
thersites, you are claiming that no commentator on this site has advocated capital punishment for Bush and Cheney, or fantasized about killing them?
Um, first of all, capital punishment only comes after a trial. Most Americans appear to believe it is just retribution for capital crimes. So it's not quite the same as yelling "off with his head!"
Who can say what someone on this site might have posted late, late one night after too much adult beverage? What I claim is that no Democratic presidential candidate has rallied supporters to believe that it's appropriate to advocate killing a political rival. That is truly a step beyond--a contradiction to everything that McCain supposedly fought for. But he doesn't seem to care.
If Obama becomes president, and that looks increasingly likely, the GOP will smear him and try to bring him down with every means possible, including assassination. Count on it. Look, it has been liberals that have been murdered for the past 50 years - JFK, RFK, MLK, Paul Wellstone, etc. Conservatives always try to use violence to solve problems. Timothy McVeigh and John McCain are kindred spirits.
thersites, you are claiming...
Evil Twin and cowalker answered just fine while I was napping and/or dreaming about cats.
If you think that Deflator at 4:51 is being paranoid, you're not listening to enough talk radio. Jay Severin is already talking about Obama's impeachment.
This tactic will bring McCain down in flames in Nov. Independents are not impressed.
But the wingnuts will claim the media is to blame for a stolen election.
Severe economic times in combination with political polarization and seething hatred could be explosive.
On top of all of our other problems, President Obama will need to reach across this divide from day 1.
We on the left need to help this effort.
Jack, Jack, Jack...Gee, the Republican's wanted to impeach Clinton because he had cigar sex with one of his aides. The neocons didn't push Bill and Hilliary's shady business dealings which were absolutely kindergarten compared to Bush and Cheney..The Democrats (more like the Move On people) want to impeach Bush, for entering into a illegal, immoral war, killing millions of Iraqi, Afghan, and American people for oil...It's called crimes against humanity. There is a huge gap in your reasoning...No one should care what the president does for recreation, as long as it's two consenting adults...Even if they are married, Bill and Hilary's marriage was none of our business...This had nothing to do with mass murder, and personal profit for oil!
I can only hope President Obama uses the newfound powers of the executive to spy on and root out these domestic terrorists and let their lily white asses rot in Guantanemo, with or without due process.
The right wing deserves nothing less than having a few of their more violent members inconvenienced, or if necessary, disappeared.
Except, of course, if laws suddenly matter after 11/4/2008? And if it's white trash whose civil liberties are being taken away.
We have a firm lock on Congress. We can ignore them until they grow up. I predict a split-up of the Republican party into its Christian Right and business wings.
JONAH GOLDBERG, defending McCain from Buckley, ladies and gentlemen:
He thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain's recent political performance. But even if you think McCain has run a less than honorable campaign (I do not which is not to say that I think he's run a particularly good campaign), it's hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for and greatly admires George HW Bush.
I'm old enough to remember Clinton's impeachment. I thought at the time that it was the death knell for the Republican Party. They had just impeached a President over extra-marital sex denigrating both themselves and the very notion of impeachment.
Two years later they produced the "post-partisan" George W. Bush and pretended for all the world like impeachment had never happened.
These are the people who brought us Reagan in the aftermath of Nixon's near impeachment. And they managed to maintain power in the face of Reagan's criminal (nay, treasonous) behavior in selling arms to Iran.
I wouldn't count them out just yet (though I would certainly love to do so).
Aside from Clinton's character and style, there's another important difference from the 90's. Clinton only won by plurality, twice. Obama is likely to have a solid majority of the popular vote.
It makes a difference, a big difference. They are past the denial stage and now are in anger. Soon there will be bargaining, then acceptance.
Having lived through the Kennedy assassinations and so many other tragedies, I am frightened by the violence and hate in the Republicans (kill him???). I can't believe McCain would encourage such a thing. I'm not surprised that Nazi Mom likes it, though. She is truly scary.
So if I understand the comments correctly, Reagan was a traitor, Bush is a murderer, and the Republicans are disgusting because some of them use overheated and disrespectful rhetoric about Obama. Got it.
y81, what do you call trading arms with people who are holding our citizens hostage? What do you call it when you make promises of such trades in the hopes of undermining your current President?
What do you call it when you terrorize an innocent people with hundreds of bombs? What do you call it when hundreds of thousands of people die because of your actions?
Now, what do you call it when someone cries "treason" without even a fig-leaf of rationale? How disgusting do you have to be to call it "overheated" when someone is calling for the hanging of a US Senator?
All of the examples you cite - oh, wait, you haven't bothered to cite anything - nonetheless, all of the posts in this thread have stayed pretty far away from generic calls of "traitor," "treason," or "kill him." Can you say the same about the thugs under discussion at the McCain/Palin rallies?
Oh, that's right. You aren't making an argument based on facts - you are making an idiotic equivalence based on wishful thinking.
I dedicate this one to Levi Johnston & Bristol Palin, whom, I am sure, are fans. I hope this reminds you of mom & her soulmate (no, not the First Dude; the Five & an Half Years).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYeWTA9s3F8
The good news about the sub-standard behavior of McCain-Palin is that the crowd response is driven by anger and resentment channeled as bigotry and hatred.
McCain's sense of duty and responsibility is at best an afterthought, evidence of a failing that should disqualify his consideration to be president.
The head-bangers on television bear some responsibility for not behaving to the standard required of citizens of a democracy.They have set a climate and sense of legitimacy, as well as a model of sub-normal, sub-human behavior.
Watch out if anger and resentment is mixed with fear.Then the carefully (or is it heedlessly?) cultivated fascination with violence will be expressed more emphatically.
Did any one see Obama on TV he told all that his muslin faith and Odinga will stand as one.
Did you know how long Obama was with Odinga? He Odinga is just llike Obama they are good for the world. we will be made muslin. Read or not here we come!
Odinga, Obama There is no one like Obama. The L wing made up this Odinga. Yes we will make all fall Down on their nees to Obama.