Here's a very good point, the perfect demonstration of what Fox "news" does, along with the people whose water it carries. (Or is it the other way around?) Anyway...
.... [C]onservative rhetoric only makes sense today if you ignore the conservative rhetoric from July. Throughout the Republicans’ debt-ceiling hostage strategy, a wide variety of prominent voices on the right downplayed the threat, not only of default, but also of a downgrade... Don’t worry about the consequences of the hostage plan, conservatives said, just focus on the ransom.
And yet, notice what happened after the downgrade actually occurred — suddenly the consequences the right “welcomed” are necessarily President Obama’s fault, reality notwithstanding.
Indeed, two weeks ago, Fox viewers were told downgrade might be a good thing. This morning, Fox viewers were told repeatedly that the downgrade the GOP caused is a tragedy that must be blamed on the White House.
There’s a good reason Fox viewers seem so confused so often.
Truly, it's no exaggeration to say that the smoking remnants of the Republican party, and their mouthpieces of the airwaves, and their leadership hopefuls have, with exuberance, taken leave of all pretense of reason. Clinging with bloody fingernails to discredited ideas, singularly focused on regaining and retaining power for themselves and those who've bought them, ignoring long-term consequences to the country they claim to love, they've shown willingness to say and do anything to bring down Obama, while stamping their feet to get their way.
One expects politicians to have a certain facility for fudging the truth. But simply ignoring it, willfully to mislead so blatantly, cynically to foist destruction on the public because they care only about their power and hewing evangelically to their already-failed ideology -- this is happening at a level heretofore unseen, far as I can tell.
According to an Andrew Sullivan post yesterday, it could be worse if Obama started stating the obvious: "I think they've tried to goad him in order to provoke exactly this response [fighting back] that would give them a natural, racist ["Angry Black Man"] advantage. His refusal to take the bait means an awful amount of disappointment in his base, but is, I think, the least worst tactic given his race and personality."
ReplyDeleteWell, I think those that have such feelings about him will have them no matter what. Rick Perry, for example, recently said of an Obama speech that he was "talking down (or was it condescending) to us." In other words, he don't cotton to hearing no black feller smartin' off.
ReplyDeleteSuch thinking is certainly part of the hate that follows Obama from Fox and the rest of the RWS™. But if it'd be right for a president to speak forcefully about the deceptions of the other side, then race ought to have nothing to do with whether he decides to do so.
BIrthers, teabaggers, those that believe he's a secret Muslim terrorist will have those thoughts no matter what, and it's hard to imagine how they'd hate him any more than they already do. I don't agree he needs to behave differently because of his race.
Not sure I agree with Andrew Sullivan either, but that particular post did catch my attention and I've been thinking about it ever since. There's a lot of casual racism where I live. The hatred of Obama here is also casual, but could be made more active with the "right" sort of messaging, resulting in a higher voter turnout. Rick Perry's comments were pure dog whistle racism ~ I doubt he personally cares about the tone of Obama's speech.
ReplyDeleteSullivan seems to think that Obama is a master of political jujitsu ~ he only has to be the adult in the room and eventually his opponents are hoisted on their own petards and end up looking like fools. If only.
I despise the propaganda network that is FOX. But at this point, what exactly is the difference in economic policies between the President and the Republican party in practice? The former supports the repeat of 1937 austerity meaures and the other supports it even more. The President wants to talk about the deficit so he doesn't have to talk about economy. The problem with the idea of needing moderate Republicans to blunt the extreme Republicans is that they are also wrong. We have plenty of them. We just call them President Obama, Blue Dog Democrats, conservative Democrats, members of the DLC, etc. Put simply, President Obama is precisely where he wants to be politically. We wanted FDR, we got Hoover.
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Well, I said from the before he was elected that Obama was, Foxobeckian claims notwithstanding (and left-wing hero-worship, too, for that matter), a moderate. To me it was obvious from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless I don't agree that he's exactly where he wants to be, at least based on what he's said. He got what he could from a Congress that was simply unworkable.
And, far as I can tell, there are "triggers" in the debt agreement that would include increasing revenues.
I've expressed my disappointment in Obama many times. But I'm not certain anyone could have gotten further with the teabaggRs; how do you, when they're willing to destroy everything to get their way?
Here's a pretty strong opinion that we can probably both agree with.
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