Feels like a moment

This feels like a moment, an instance occurring occasionally in American politics, when a political force takes a defining shape.

This is the moment when the Republican Party has been branded by the collection of kooks, liars, bigots and nihilists that populate it.

As David Frum writes:

Now the more haunting question: How did this poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation get such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican party?

I know there will be Republican writers and conservative publicists who will now deny that birtherism ever did get a grip. Sorry, that’s just wrong. Not only did Donald Trump surge ahead in Republican polls by flaming racial fires – not only did conservative media outlets from Fox to Drudge to the Breitbart sites indulge the birthers – but so also did every Republican candidate who said, ‘I take the president at his word.’ Birthers did not doubt the president’s ‘word.’ They were doubting the official records of the state of Hawaii. It’s like answering a 9/11 conspiracist by saying, ‘I take the 9/11 families at their word that they lost their loved ones.’

Yet even now, the racialist aspect of the anti-Obama movement has not subsided.

Franklin Graham Continues Bigotry and Exclusion, Aimed at Pres. Obama

The despicable Franklin Graham was properly skewered on the Lawrence O'Donnell show last night for spouting Birther nonsense, continuing the long Graham tradition of bigotry and ignorance.

Now, Graham is rolling out the true nature of the Other occupying the oval office as the GOP searches for its candidate with the right combination of racism and dedication to dismantlement of anything not corporate or fundamentalist.

In a well-publicized rebuke last year [thanks to the work of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and Mikey Weinstein], Graham—a dedicated anti-Semitic Dominionist Christian—was disinvited to the National Day of Prayer ceremony at the Pentagon.



But Graham needs no incentive from President Obama or those Christ-killing Jews to inflame his flock of bigots afraid of the scary black man looking like a lock for four more years.

Muslims, Jews, and assorted disbelievers of Graham's brand of mythology are all destined to be judged and not very well, Graham assures us, as he raves on in his old-fashioned xenophobic vein of hatred to save America as a Christian nation.

All the unbelievers can go to hell.

Thank you Lawrence O'Donnell. Graham stands exposed for all to see.

Just wish everybody were watching. O'Donnell has really found his voice as he pounds the ignorance that is a prerequisite for the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.

GOP Gains Modest in 2010, Say Political Insiders

A desperate Republican Party base that wants it country back from the black man elected president won't get much good news from next year's election.

The 2010 off-year elections, generally presenting a loss for the Party in power, will feature tiny gains for the GOP at most, a majority of political insiders in the National Journal say in a new poll.

The poll was conducted by James A. Barnes and Peter Bell.

All U.S. Representatives and one third of U.S. Senators are up for election every two years.

As the worst recession since the Great Depression perhaps subsides next year, the Democratic Party is seen by most as suffering minimal losses.

Ninety-nine percent of Democratic insiders and 94 percent of GOP insiders polled see no chance to a moderate chance of the GOP taking control of the House of Representatives.

Eighty-six percent of Democratic insiders and 55 percent of GOP insiders polled see either a net Democratic gain or a GOP pick-up of only one to two seats in the Democratically controlled U.S. Senate.

As a political brand, the Republican Party remains damaged.

It is seen as shrill, paranoid and out-of-touch as more scholarly conservatives scramble "to disassociate themselves from Birthers, WorldNetDaily, and other objectively crazy people," in the words of Ed Kilgore.

Black Helicopters and Birthers

Rick Perlstein has a piece in the Washington Post that would make H.L. Mencken proud.

The American rightwing is not crazy, just ignorant, bigoted and foolish. Makes for some lively entertainment.

In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition
Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

By Rick Perlstein
Sunday, August 16, 2009
In Pennsylvania last week, a citizen, burly, crew-cut and trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator: 'One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts.' He was accusing Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance.

In Michigan, meanwhile, the indelible image was of the father who wheeled his handicapped adult son up to Rep. John Dingell and bellowed that 'under the Obama health-care plan, which you support, this man would be given no care whatsoever.' He pressed his case further on Fox News.