The Right Unites Against Obama

Against Obama, The Right Unites

It might be the surest sign yet that Barack Obama is going to win this thing: the Right is, at long last, coalescing in an argument against him. After months of somewhat embarrassing fawning from the likes of David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, conservatives have heeded Obama's call for unity and raised a collective eyebrow of doubt at the junior Senator from Illinois. They have found their voice, you might say.

It started with some bandwagon backlashing from Charles Krauthammer and a sporting satire from Brooks. A fiery Krauthammer (even his name sounds angry) warns against the doom that awaits after "Obama casts his spell." The shallow premise paints Obama as a huckster, a "silver tongued" "Hope Pope." He's Jimmy Swaggart, David Koresh and the inventor of bottled water rolled into one. In short, he's a sham.

The thing about this archetypal American villain--played out from Joseph Smith to The Music Man--is how neatly it dovetails with the nativist attack that follows. This Barack Hussein Obama fellow--the argument goes--the tall slender one hawking those vials of "Hope" down in the town square, he is not like us. He is not American like you and me.

Clever conservatives.

It's a simple argument, cynical and low, plain as the smirk on Robert Novak's mug. It reverberates crisply in the vast hollows of the right-wing echo chamber. It is versatile. Like a truth-resistant strain of bacteria, the smear mutates and adapts.

The outbreak began with those patently false e-mail chains. He doesn't pledge allegiance to the flag. He doesn't wear a pin. He will be sworn in on the Koran.

The AM Radio Fascists, free from consequence or accountability, can ask, as Michael Savage did last week "...what kind of Muslim he is ...We have a right to know if he's a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings."

People are listening to these shows. The smear spreads.

Obama's wife, the one with the French name, she doesn't love America. His father was a Muslim, ergo, evil. His grandmother does not believe in shoes.

Conservative intellectuals will turn their noses at such hate mongering while weaving substantively identical narratives. Peggy Noonan, straightened and steeled since her early swoonings, suited up in Old Glory before gamely suggesting that Michelle Obama's blackness actually made her life easier. So easy, in fact, that, get this, Michelle Obama actually is Hillary Clinton. And oh yeah, she hates America. A lot.

William "It's not easy to defend excellence" Kristol, on break from moral grandstanding, called out Obama's "moral vanity." So vain is he, that, get this, Barack Obama actually is Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry, all in one easy-to-loathe package.

The Left tries to join the fracas with its own tilted-pitch tactics, but liberals lack the cunning and the brazen dishonesty for this fight. The New York Times' tabloid turn--that splashy, sexed-up McCain scandal piece--was a stunningly self-defeating decision. Gloria Steinem can question the relevance of McCain's wartime imprisonment, but it's just going to make a lot of people question Gloria Steinem.

Disheartening as it is to see both sides slinking towards their battle stations, it's possible that the public, or the candidates themselves, might yet reject these tiresome reruns. After radio-vituperator Bill Cunningham brought his bile center stage last week, the ugliness of the tirade brought a quick and straight McCain apology.

In that brief mea culpa, one was reminded of a central tenet of the Obama phenomenon. It's easy, Obama has said, to be against something. McCain refuses that easy drink. It's much harder, and rare in today's toxic discourse, to be for something. This is Obama's gamble, and the promise of a race between these two iconoclasts: that America is tired of tearing itself in two, that this time, whichever side we choose, we are going to be for something.

Follow Michael Ames on Twitter: www.twitter.com/haikudose

Comments

[ndolomar]

how many anti-obama clinton supporters actually think the "obamabots" (as they so lovingly are dubbed) have memories like goldfish and magically will return to vote for her in november? please, keep the insults and demeaning attitudes (both sides, frankly), and in november, if obama doesn't get the nomination, i'll happily cast my vote for ralph nader -- who at least is a logical second choice.

[Countess]

The right wing is not limited to the republican party as we can see with the Clinton campaign who has now successfully united all the most retrograde elements of the democratic party to her cause. There are many uneducated and redneck voters who are still democrats and now with the right wingers on the republican side they have found their voice in Hillary Clinton.

[BigRube]

Here is question for all the people of the USA.
Who runs this great country of ours, Rush A. Limbaugh,Sean A. Hannity, and all of these so called conservitive talk show host or the people of the USA?
Can someone please answer that question for me?

[spacealien]

excellent article.

[linki]

Listen closely, it is not just the right who is slamming Obama, his wife, his parents etc., it is also a multitude of democrats who support hillary, do not like obama for one reason or another and are very vocal about bashing him and then in the next sentence supporting hillary. To suggest that this is an exxlusive with the right bashing the left.... is to mislead readers a bit.

I have seen the venom all over online message boards and it is the in-party-hate and attacks on thier own party that are the most disturbing. The right slams the left with insults and trash talking they call real and the left bashing the right with insults and trash talking they call real and true. That's just the party members of both sides who are the classless, ignorant and self-esteem robbed sort, there are those in both parties and they are both equally as disturbing. But the fact that there are democrats in this catagory openly doing this to one of their own, is what is most disturbing and unaddressed here or anywhere else that has liberal boards.

I guess to bring this to light is taboo or it is just too shameful to address. But it would be nice if the party talked to its memebers somehow and asked them to hold on to their nasty tongues for the good of the party they think they believe in so terribly much.

[spacealien]

good point.

[BigRube]

Amen to that.

[BigRube]

It's real simple why the right is against Obama, they know that McCain might not win if he gets nominated.The best thing to do is vote for who you want and not let the so called conservitive talk shows dictate to you. If you listen to conservitive talk shows you will hear that they really do like to DICTATE.

[Clinton]

It is good that the right unites against Obama because they won't have the discipline to restrain their racist rhetoric. That will then degenerate into the other ugly manifestations of their ugly character. And then they will lose. We will have our country back.

[Serfie]

After all the nastiness and hatred that the Obama supporters have thrown at Hillary Clinton, it seems like karmic justice that Obama is getting his retribution from the right..

The Obamanistas think they are holier than thou, yet they have acted no different than your average right-wing thug.

Now they wonder why their Lord and Savior will be attacked by the right, as if that wasn't the plan from the get go.

[jvarga]

Because in your fantasy world Senator Clinton and her supporters have been nothing but congenial? Yeah I totally agree, because many of us haven't been called sexist cavemen for the last few weeks. Of course, referring to people as "Obamanistas" in the midst of a hate-filled comment on a blog is just the sort of behavior you're pretending to rail against.

You're an example of why so many of us want nothing to do with Senator Clinton in the white house.

[Kim445588]

You are totally out of touch if you think this has been one sided. I went to my Obama office here in Ohio this Saturday to pick up some yard signs and there were a bunch of Clinton supporters PICKETING the office! I know this is very contested, but I really felt that her supporters have just gone too far! They did the same thing at the town hall meeting here.

In addition, you are not getting the essence of Rush Limbaugh's campaign, his slogan is something like "keep her in it, so we can win it". The point is that Mrs. Clinton can and will do much more damage to Obama than the repugs could ever do. They are not suddenly for Obama or Clinton, so much as attempting to find a way to make up for the lackluster of their own candidate. They are enjoying watching the party implode, and the idea is that the longer it goes on, the more damage that can be done. After running into the Clinton picketers, I think he just may be right.

[linki]

As I see it personally, Hillary is hurting herself with these below the belt attacks. If she were to listen to the public more carefully, or, at all, she would understand that those who most support obama are doing so in part because he is taking the high road, he is trying to run a clean campaign and trying to change the attack mentality into a discussion of ideas, a campaign that has candidates expressing their views and solutions for the country - not one that tries to win buy being the one less bashed or the one most able to trash another candidate. This is a trend not just for the primaries, but the general election as well. With obama and mccain running and both promising to run a clean, facts and views and visions sort of campaign, this sort of attack dog mentality can be a thing of the past, at least for this elelction and one would hope. Hillary isn't hearing that people are sick of this sort of politics and they have been very verbal with those feelings. Hillary didn't listen, so I think her campaign will suffer more than obama's campaign -- and she will be seen as the attacker we all want to rid ourselves of.

[boonagain]

and it doesn't help that Hillary is throwing up trial balloons for the Right Wing, courtesy of her hapless campaign.