Changing Course
Despite the reactions generated by recent revelations about the sermons of Obama’s pastor, I see no reason to change my comments. The current Republican-neoconservative attacks on Obama have been accompanied by the arduous efforts of “movement conservative” celebrities to persuade Republican voters to change their party registration in order to back Hillary in the primaries. I suspect that what lies behind these efforts is more than the tactic of helping out the Democrat whom McCain is more likely to defeat. As one editor of the Weekly Standard explained to me in a moment of candor this January, Hillary “is simply better on the war.” That in my view is what is driving Republican support for Hillary, who at this point does not seem to be the easier of the two Democratic presidential contenders to defeat.
Until quite recently, Obamamania was not something limited to blacks, white yuppies, and left-of-center media personalities. Establishment conservatives and self-described Republicans paid equally fulsome tribute to the junior senator from Illinois. On the evening of Obama’s victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary, FOX contributor and Weekly Standard-editor Fred Barnes could hardly contain himself talking about the victor: “this man will be president; mark my word he’ll be elected president this year or sometime in the future.” Barnes’s observation was an obvious expression of deep affection. But other Republicans commentators sounded exactly the same way. One view that was not entirely out of line with other opinions from similar sources came from National Review contributor John O’ Sullivan. According to O’Sullivan writing in NRO, an Obama presidency “would be the climax of this long policy of fully integrating blacks and minority Americans into the nation.” “The conservative interest would therefore smile on a vote for Obama.” The fact that the recommended candidate was the “most liberal Senator in the US Senate, and on the extreme Left,” to quote former Bush advisor Karl Rove, seemed to have long escaped Republican notice.
There were of course critics of Obama on the right, but these were not the people who counted. They were members of the now isolated Old Right, those whom the centrist GOP establishment and their neoconservative confidants had driven out of public life. These commentators, most of whom supported Ron Paul, were never exactly keen on Obama. They called attention to his association with his Afrocentric minister Jeremiah Wright, who had bestowed an award on anti-white and anti-Semitic bigot Louis Farrakhan. These critics also noted that there was a portrait of Southern American communist revolutionary Che Guevara on the wall of Obama’s Houston headquarters. Finally Obama’s early critics reported certain anti-white remarks attributed to his wife Michelle. But more centrist conservatives stayed clear of such revelations, until everything changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Suddenly FOX network, which had formerly celebrated Obama, began to unload on him. The once unmentioned Che Guevara flag in Houston morphed into wall-to-wall paintings of Stalin and Castro; the Afrocentric minister in Chicago has become a stand-in for Farrakhan, whom Wright did indeed claim “epitomized greatness.” Meanwhile the neoconservative and Republican press began to go after Michelle Obama with almost as much fury as they unleashed on her hubby.
On March 1, Sean Hannity offered on FOX a detailed evaluation of Mrs. Obama’s senior paper submitted at Princeton University. Although this paper contained the usual PC filler about racism among Princeton students, its descriptions of snobbish undergraduates, for all I know, may be accurate. But, even more relevant, there was nothing in the supposedly ominous remarks quoted by Hannity and shown on my TV screen which seemed especially venomous. All I extracted from the text was the kind of pabulum fed to students in social science courses across the US. It is also the same complaining that I encounter in the neoconservative New York Post, when the editors reach out to black contributors. Does Hannity believe that the senior thesis of Hillary Clinton, on gender discrimination, save for emphasizing a different victim group, is very different from the one submitted by Michelle Obama? Or that a senior paper in the social sciences on discrimination that came from one of President Bush’s daughters would be significantly different from what Hannity was denouncing? These papers tend to run along the same lines, featuring the same platitudes and repetitive wooden language.
There are strategic reasons why networks that once drooled over Obama are now his enemies. But here one must qualify: Not all of his onetime Republican fans are denouncing this senator in response to some central command post. But those at the top, directing publications and televised commentary for the GOP and the neoconservative establishment, are dropping bombs on him, and in far more reckless manner than his critics on the old right ever did. One primary consideration here is that it is Obama, not Hillary, who looks like the probable Democratic candidate; and so Republican loyalists are taking off their jackets and getting to work on the Democratic frontrunner.
It may also be the case that the same establishment has a Republican candidate it is eager to get behind, someone who would provide continuity with the present administration but who, unlike Bush, would justify his policy with verbal skill. McCain has the further advantage of being a genuine war hero, and his willingness to use force to settle international disputes would therefore appear consistent with his military past. Whatever the reason for the about-face in the treatment of Obama, it is making the GOP look ridiculously opportunistic. While my views are light years away from his, I have begun to sympathize with this presidential candidate as I watch his opponents go after him.
[The preceding text was published earlier as a column for the Lancaster Newspapers.]
Comments
Another home run Paul,with the enemies Obama has, I could almost vote for him.You are right, it’s all about the war and empire,Hillary is the far safer bet.She has shown her balls by bombing Iraq and Serbia and invading Bosnia and Haiti.The neocon project will move forward with either Hilly or the mad bomber.I still can’t vote for Obama, but he is the best of 3 awful choices.
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So the “isolated Old Right” are Ron Paul liberatarians? Always wondered where they went. Funny, though, how many Old Right Paulies are supporting Obama, a radical leftist of the black nationalist school. The old timers may becoming a bit senile.
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The neo-con right are one crazed confused schizoid bunch. For the longest time they appeared to be gearing toward a fight against Hillary so of course they fell over themselves to complement Obama. Now that it looks like Obama will not only beat Hillary, but their man McCain as well, he is suddenly being targeted. I have to think though that it is a little strange that they have held out this long with this Wright stuff. I mean everyone has known about it for a long time now. They didn’t attempt to sabotage the primary as they did with Ron Paul in New Hampshire. They didn’t hold it until the general election. That tells me that the criminal media are ok with an Obama presidency which means to me further nuttiness will ensue.
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Re; Nucci,
“Further Nuttiness will Ensue”...eureka, you have discovered the new National Motto.
But, as to the good Mr. Gottfried asserting that John “My Frendzz” McCain will “justify his policy with verbal skill” ...well , all I can say is Bush may have softened up the national chumpdom of the Leisuretariet for the knockout punch by McCain.
If I have to listen to this guy mumble while Little Smilin Joey Lieberman hovers in the background, I’ll kneecap myself BEFORE blowing my brains out.
Not that I’m making any promises now. Hillary Screeching while jacked up on her feminist viagra and bleeding heart on a vampire cruise or McCain droning like he’s a little late with his diabetes medicine or Obama doing the velvet nines on the gullible Grey Eyed Devil...all of these are the kind of national suicide that makes a Colt Blast to the Head seem somehow timid. Oratory? As Richard Pryor said, “I seen better faces on a iodine bottle”
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@Dirk,
Our prospects, from a rosy optimistic view, are grim bordering on dire. McCrazed is the worst because it would be another case of government by vice prez. Obama is the most idealistic and therefore the quickest route to disaster. Hillary will be the quickest route to the camps. My prediction is that voters will stay home in droves cramming on learning a foreign language and looking to flee to another country.
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Ron Paul picked up a lot of support from anti-war folks from a Dem background. For them, like myself, the war is the central issue. The problem is that we came to love Dr Paul but now have the dilemna, we can hope and pray that a miracle happens and that he gets elected or we can look to Obama.
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@ Nucci & Bill W., NH
Thats some parched desert we’re crossing, from the wastes of disaffection to the chaste and disciplined realm of Paul to the florid and expansive realm of Obama. Usually, the politicians try and create single issue politics to tame distracted voters but with Mr. Bush’s war on sanity, they are relieved of this sordid task.
It’s why Nucci can assert that voters will stay home in droves and be within the realm of the possible (after all a 45% turnout is considered good these days) while Bill WNH can cling to long shot Paul but accept Obama and echo the sentiments of many.
The majority of the people remain somehow convinced that their government can be redeemed and having tired of someone with the speaking skills of a resentful juvenile, they look to the smooth blandishments of a very poised gentleman telling them what they want to hear....without a simple clue as to the hard slogging that will be required to wrench the public’s head from their sphincter hat.
Electing a President solves nothing. The entire government must be slapped back into an understanding of it’s duties and obligations and that will not happen until either disaster or extreme pain makes continuing the current charade impossible. By that point, the odds favor the ascendance of some crusading nutcase reminiscent of the twisted little sociopath spawned by the Weimar Era.
Yes My FREEENNNZZZ, , the spirited idiocy we have on tap will come to make Mexican Wrestling look like High Tea at the Dorchester Hotel. It makes one remember the single most important rare lapse of prescience on the part of the omni-prepared Founders: not locating Washington D.C. in a place more regularly impacted by Natural Disaster.
I wouldn’t move though, the show is about to turn professionally sick and this is where rubber hits the road and the Fat Lady sings her best Aria.
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McCrazed is the worst because it would be another case of government by vice prez.
And because McCainiac would be rewarding the “fuck you, you’ll be voting for whatever RINO we anoint” thing. That’s what pisses me off the most - and I’m not even a Conservative!
Obama is the most idealistic and therefore the quickest route to disaster.
I think I have B’lack O’rama figured out, finally. He’s a self-hating white who, in his own (and the media’s) mind has set sail for (richly deserved) legend status by embracing his “blackness.” I think every thing he does is best understood through that lens.
Hillary will be the quickest route to the camps.
Of the three, I’m pulling for Shrillary because she can beat McCainiac. O’rama’s no-pin-wearing, no-pledge-standing, Farrakhan-loving ass is toast.
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Clinton’s Bosnia adventure will be the ruin of her. That lie is just too big and it’s not going away soon.
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Clinton’s Bosnia adventure will be the ruin of her. That lie is just too big and it’s not going away soon.
The trouble with that is the whole political class is right there in it with her. They’ll collectively pardon themselves and move on.
On the other hand, such pardons do often involved scapegoats…
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Obama has done a lot of good PR, and media manipulation. In a recent issue of “Foreign Affairs” magazine, Obama clearly states that the use of military force to defend Isreal or various U.S. interests is fully justified. He is definently not a pacifist. His moral character is also questionable, he has admited to using hard drugs; and his closeness to this Rev. Wright or Farrakhan or whoever else he has made frieds with. This is not to say that to endorse Clinton or McCain is any better, they have plenty of skeletons in their closets. In the end, no matter which of these knuckleheads gets elected, the USA and it’s citizens, are in deep trouble.
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....(one more time) who among you still think you have a democracy in the U.S. ?
(i know, i know, it’s a constitutional republic but leaving aside the strict definition and ask the question most americans would say they live in a democracy)
Months and months, nay YEARS, of posturing with many millions of dollars spent and talking heads pontificating and these are the # that are left in it?!?!?!
There is no choice, really, it was rigged from the start. The real powers in this world would never leave the decision about such an important position up to the fickle whims of the unwashed masses.
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And only recently have the Republicans “discovered” to their horror that Obama and Hil (and the Dems in general) support affirmative action. This may be news to the party faithful, but not to any conservative who has grown up under Democratic presidents since LBJ.
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Paul’s website:
http://www.paulgottfried.com
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“McCain has the further advantage of being a genuine war hero”
Professor, what makes John McCain a hero? I’ve often wondered about how any scumbag politician who was in combat automatically becomes a “war hero” simply by running for office.
In McCain’s case, he’s much more likely to have been a traitor while in captivity rather than a hero. I’ve noticed that some combat veterans in the blogosphere refer to McCain as “The Manchurian Candidate”. There may be some substance to the rumors about his collaboration with his captors.
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If anyone thinks Obombus, Billary and McKillus are the only choices, and you vote for one of them, then you deserve what you get. But damn you for making the rest of us suffer for your stupidity.
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