The Long, Long War

BooMan dissects the Esquire article on the birthers I talked about yesterday, and reminds us the Right has always been at war with logic.

Looking back on the first two years of the Clinton administration, there was a lot more legitimate cause for alarm on the Right. Clinton really did sign the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban. Clinton really did try to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Clinton really did sign NAFTA into law. Federal agents really did kill seventy-six people during the siege of Waco. It wasn't just HillaryCare that upset the Right during the early years of the Clinton administration. And, in spite of all the vicious rumors that were spread about the Clintons, there were tangible government-led changes for the Right to oppose.

Then, as now, there was a lot of talk about the Democrats wanting to do away with our national sovereignty and lead us towards a world government. We began to hear the black helicopter talk and saw the rise of the militia-movement. But, back then, it was a lot easier to see some evidence that the government in Washington was getting leftward of where the country was politically. The opinions polls showed the country moving towards the Republicans. There was plenty of advanced warning that the Gingrich Revolution was coming.

Today, while Obama's polling numbers have returned to Earth, the president and his party remain popular, and certainly much more popular than the Republicans. The fringiness we're seeing is both more mainstream (in that it is embraced by more Republican leaders and has broader purchase in the GOP's base) and more uncoupled to any hint of reality. But, despite these differences, there is a certain disconcerting commonality. In both cases, a significant portion of the Right responded to the election of a Democratic president with revolutionary and secessionary rhetoric and actions.

Ever since Kennedy replaced Eisenhower, it seems that the default position of the Right (when they do not control the White House) is revolutionary and secessionist. There is a longer pattern here that cannot be explained by Obama's hue and Muslim-sounding middle name. Yet, the Crazy does seem somewhat amplified by racial anxieties at the moment, and we cannot dismiss this new component.

No, we cannot dismiss the racial component to the Right's anger over this. Nobody appears to want to admit the issue, but it's getting to the point where the combination of the worst of the paranoia over the Clintons/liberals/Democrats and the worst of the anger over racism/Muslims/foreigners has combined into something truly horrific.

Johh Cook at Gawker has more on this phenomenon:

But let's be clear: anyone watching the mounting rage over, of all things, health care — perhaps one of the most boring and complex policy subjects — has to worry that these people are going to try to kill Barack Obama. That's not an extrapolation from unhinged rhetoric, or a partisan reading of the imagined intentions of our political enemies. It's a rational reading of the anticipated behavior of a man who brandishes a gun at the location where the president is expected to imminently arrive while holding a sign that openly advocates his assassination. And the astonishing, breathtaking, maddening fact that he hasn't been violently taken to the ground by large men wearing suits and earpieces is an open encouragement to anyone else so inclined to give it a shot.

There are always people who want to kill the president. Generally speaking, they are politically marginalized, insane, and/or too incompetent to come close to achieving their ends. But in the past six months, people who would be inclined to do violence to our political leaders have been affirmatively embraced by the Republican Party and its messaging operation. It's as if there had been a 24-hour cable news channel in 1981 devoted to coverage of Jodie Foster, and what it would take for someone to get her attention.

And the sad part is that the GOP is embracing these nutbags because they are the only type of demographic growth they can get right now. For the most part, these are the people that until now thought the Republicans were incompetent wimps and spineless losers, the George W. Bush Keystone Kops party.

Now of course the "patriot" movement sees the Republicans as their only chance...and vice versa. The GOP knows they can't pick up people to the left of them...but they sure as hell are trying to pick up people further right. Purge the moderates, leave them floundering, and go for the nutbar right.

That's the plan. Obama Derangement Syndrome is now a Republican platform plank.