The GOP's Anti-Obama Propaganda

[Emit]

By Robert Parry
February 25, 2009

Today’s Republicans are thumbing through Newt Gingrich’s worn playbook of 1993 looking for tips on how to blunt President Barack Obama’s political momentum and flip it to their advantage. In doing so, they also appear to have dug in to what might be called the secret appendix.

~snip~

Now, 16 years since the start of Clinton’s presidency, the Republicans and their right-wing allies are again on the outside of Washington power and are back studying the lessons of 1993-94. Only a month into Obama’s presidency, there are some striking similarities in the two historical moments.

In both cases, the Democrats inherited recessions and huge budget deficits from Republican presidents named Bush. In both cases, congressional Republicans rallied against the economic package of the new President hoping to strangle the young Democratic administrations in their cradles.

And, as congressional Republicans worked on a more overt political level, their media allies and other operatives were getting busy at subterranean depths, reviving attack lines from the campaigns to sow doubts about the two Democratic presidents – and trying to whip up the right-wing base into a near revolutionary fervor.

~snip~

Ironically, right-wingers who defended George W. Bush when he mounted a radical assault on the Constitution – seeking to establish an imperial presidency while eliminating habeas corpus and other key freedoms – are suddenly seeing threats to the Constitution from Obama.

Fox News, in particular, has been floating the idea of armed rebellion. On Feb. 20 – the one-month anniversary of Obama’s inauguration – Glenn Beck hosted a special program called “War Room” that “war-gamed” various scenarios including the overthrow of an oppressive U.S. government when “bubba” militias rise up and gain the support of the American military.

~snip~

Beck then suggested that Obama’s stimulus package might lead to this back-door federal tyranny.


~snip~

Such insurrectionist musings on Fox News are not likely to be taken seriously by most people. ... But this sort of Fox chatter runs the risk of feeding the well-nursed grievances of angry white “bubbas” and possibly inspiring a new Timothy McVeigh.

More significantly, today’s Republican leaders – finding themselves with little new to offer – appear to have turned to the well-worn pages of this earlier GOP playbook to choose the same game plan that set the nation on a dangerous and destructive course 16 years ago, a course that only now, finally, may be playing out.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/022509.html

[firedupdem]

1. They are feeding a particularly dangerous group of nuts...

But this sort of Fox chatter runs the risk of feeding the well-nursed grievances of angry white “bubbas” and possibly inspiring a new Timothy McVeigh

Now when some nutcase hurts some innocent people, they will have themselves to blame. Faux is bottom of the barrel and getting worse. Add them to the other crazies all over the cable stations.

[denverbill]

2. So, you can't show Janet Jackson's tit on TV but you can foment armed rebellion?

When is the FCC going to crack down on these traiterous jerks? If they want to preach armed insurrection I don't feel obliged to let them use the public airwaves.