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Manhattan Diary by Cahir O'Doherty

Obamageddon coming for your guns, gold and garters - GOP playbook goes off the deep end

Posted on Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 09:48 AM

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The far right doesn't like Mitt Romney, at all. That presents them with a problem, since he's the GOP candidate and despite their misgivings they still want him to win.

How to motivate all those conservative voters to show up at the polls for such an uninspiring candidate?

The answer is always the same: create a cycle of irrational hysteria. Trust in terror to get them to the polls. The GOP are masters at that. Call it the theater of the not-at-all-oppressed.

It goes like this: they're coming for you. They're coming for your guns, wives, bibles, children, faith, fried chicken, freedom.

It doesn't matter who THEY are. They're a Russian doll of liberal avatars. They will never be a shortage of THEM.

But it's hard to maintain all that bed-wetting terror year after year, just ask Stephen King. You can run out of tricks. That's why in each election cycle the GOP theatre-makers have to top themselves to create a new level of threat.

This year they have succeeded to the point where they have apparently fallen for their own fables. Or at least, that's the impression any sensible person gets when wading through the paranoid and increasingly irresponsible articles they're publishing online to terrify their owns ranks into voting.

What are the far right afraid of this election season?

Well, in no particular order, Sharia law, the confiscation of their firearms, President Obama's Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to turn Washington DC into Baghdad, the ACLU's plan to ban the Bible, Hilary Clinton's plan to force America's womenfolk into burqas, the gay marriage thugs manifesto to pilfer your husbands and redecorate your homes, Nancy Pelosi's Drive-thru abortion clinic plan, non-white people's plans to become your neighbors, Mexico's nefarious plan to repatriate the entire country in Arizona, big media's plan to sell socialism to the suburbs, and on and on.

I'm not exaggerating. This week Breitbart.com, that Tea Party oasis, claimed that President Obama's administration is paving the way for Sharia law in the United States.

'The most terrifying danger Americans face from a second Barack Obama term isn’t the economy, which is scary enough…Now there is strong and open evidence of the Obama administration collaborating with Islamist activists to ensure the path toward sharia law is accelerated.'

It must have been how-stupid-can-we-be night over at Breitbart. But this kind of spurious nonsense finds traction among the paranoid and the fearful.

Only one man can save the nation's Anglo Saxon heritage from Obamageddon, of course. You know who he is. It's a measure of how desperate the GOP and Tea Party rank and file have become now that they have to frame their political opposition with such blatantly racist dog whistles.

Before you think it's just the Muslim-bashers who fear for the future, check out another old reliable on 24/7 terror alert.

Just three days after the Aurora, Colorado shooting the National Rifle Association (NRA) sent out a mass mailing that claimed President Obama's re-election will lead to the 'confiscation of our firearms.'

Cue freakout.

Signed by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, the letter claimed the 'future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake… And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.'

Talk about a case of the vapors. It's as infuriating as it is mendacious.The truth is crazy people keep getting the guns, they have unrestricted access to tons of them in fact.

All of this might be funny, after a fashion, if it weren't for the eye-popping comments made by Tea Party supporters on FreeRepublic.com, another far right watering hole, where reactions to the bogus Sharia story included:

'There is no reason that Obama should not support Sharia Law. Considering he is a Muslim. His father was one and it is passed on to his son whether he likes it or not. This is a club that you can’t resign from, because the penalty is death.'

Another wrote:'There is strong evidence that he and Hillary are working with the Muslim Brotherhood…'

"I am far more afraid of the Muzzies than any Latino illegal,' wrote another.

It went on like this, fallacy after paranoid fallacy. They are coming. They want our guns, gods, gold and garters.

Fed on a diet of freak-out, can we claim to be surprised if delusional far right us-or-them types pick up their rifle to fire the first shot? Everywhere they look they are being told their world is under threat of extinction.

Conservatives call themselves the true patriots of real America. They scoff at everyone else. But do true patriots rip apart the fabric of the nation just to win an election?

On November 6 you can be judge.

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eiriamach | Aug 23, 2012, 07:59 PM EDT

Briano, you cannot overcome this simple fact: there ain't any evidence of voter fraud! Innocent until proven guilty, with the burden of proof on the state, not the already-registered voter. If there's an illegal alien problem, then pass laws requiring proof of citizenship for NEW registrants. I do not understand your final comment. The *possibility* of voter fraud occurring is not *evidence* that voter fraud occurs. Get the evidence and prosecute the case(s). This is my last comment on this topic, but I must say I'm shocked that you adamantly reject the presumption of innocence--a principle on which our legal system depends--in regard to one of the most essential of our rights--voting. ~~Why is it important? My union colleagues and I once dealt with a high federal official who disliked our politics so much that he called us "terrorists" and told us he'd like to imprison us. I assure you, our most potent weapons were words, which we wrapped adroitly around proven facts. Now turn that situation around and imagine a powerful govt officer who dislikes your politics so much that he'd like to imprison you. Without "innocent until proven guilty," he can do exactly that.

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BrianO | Aug 23, 2012, 07:14 PM EDT

to use your logic is to assume there is no illegal alien problem, I think more accurately the illegal aliens can be rounded up to vote democrat so you assume them to be just fine.To answer your next question, The predominance of the democrat controlled cities and the concentration of benefits to illegals in the cities allow for such voter fraud to occur.

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eiriamach | Aug 23, 2012, 07:02 AM EDT

Briano, you write, "You assume these people to be legal citizens." YES, precisely! That is exactly what the **presumption of innocence** -- "innocent until proven guilty" --MEANS! The US Constitution supports, indeed requires, precisely that assumption. Why do you not assume already-legally-registered voters to be legal citizens? Especially since, as I quoted below, the State of Pennsylvania had no evidence to offer in court that any illegal resident had ever voted or would vote in November in the State of Pennsylvania.

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eiriamach | Aug 21, 2012, 10:53 PM EDT

Eiriamach, you are right dealing with intrusive government agencies are a pain in the neck, But if you are legal and some other intrusive government agency wants proof then you deal with it, It is your world of intrusive government. You assume these people to be legal citizens as only legal citizens voting rights can be suppressed, as with any intrusive bureaucratic agency they are concerned with themselves not the Constitutional protections. I would think you would have reveled in the line as you waited for hours as your controlling government had you waste your time and energy in line, that is what big government organizations do.

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eiriamach | Aug 20, 2012, 07:31 PM EDT

BrianO, just last week I stood in line for hours in a crowded, noisy DMV after a long drive (fortunately I have a car--buses don't go there), waiting to renew my driver's license and slowly passing through a six-point inspection of half a dozen identifying documents. The clerks who have to deal with these crowds are grumpy and unreasonable. Most people I know in their seventies or older could not do that without a free ride and lots of help cutting through red tape to get enough documents. But those are only the practical difficulties. You have not addressed the crucial principle violated by the vote-suppression laws. How do you square these onerous and partisan new requirements of already-registered voters with the high value you place on Constitutional protections?

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BrianO | Aug 20, 2012, 03:07 PM EDT

Eiriamach, You obviously haven't been to the department of motor vehicles. To get a license you have to produce a birth certificate, to get a birth certificate you go to your town hall. Everyone has a birth certificate. If some one questions my status I shuffle on down to the town hall and get my birth certificate, wtf the problem. Are these people to stupid to do this, I think not. Now if I were not here legally or not registered to vote then the would be a problem.

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eiriamach | Aug 20, 2012, 01:30 PM EDT

In the Pennsylvania case, the state admitted "There have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.” Voter registration officials told the court that they would NOT offer “any evidence ... that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere,” and would present NO evidence that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law.” There ain't no evidence for depriving any registered voter of the right to vote and no benefit for anyone except the low-in-the-polls R & R team, as Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai boasted in June: the voter ID law "will allow Governor Romney to win Pennsylvania." The most dangerous government is the one you can't vote out of office.

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eiriamach | Aug 20, 2012, 12:36 PM EDT

BrianO, I do not understand how you can be so fervent in support of Constitutional rights and callous about "innocent until proven guilty." Soon after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, after Congress passed the Patriot Act, this principle so crucial to individual freedom began to erode. I began to hear recent high school graduates say things like "I don't have to worry about federal agents having access to my personal financial records, my phone records, my organizational memberships and my political affiliation because I'm not a terrorist. If I'm innocent, I have nothing to worry about!" They had wholly abandoned "innocent until proven guilty" and approved of government surveillance of their private lives without evidence of wrongdoing. You also abandon "innocent until proven guilty" in favor of an even more intrusive government when you fail to support the right of individuals to continue their "consent of the governed" (voting) without having to prove they're innocent of voter fraud. The burden of proof, of having some basis in evidence for investigating individuals, is the burden of government officials. It is never the burden of individuals to prove their innocence-- unless we have removed our legal system from its very foundation.

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eiriamach | Aug 20, 2012, 12:15 PM EDT

My point, once again, BrianO, is that these people, young and old, WERE REGISTERED to vote, and the GOP has threatened and in many cases de facto deprived them of their eligibility to vote. Not because they are unqualified voters, but because they lack driver's licenses, passports, other picture ID's, in come cases birth certificates, and that to acquire enough paperwork in time to re-register poses significant difficulties of transportation, document gathering, and fees. I would have no grounds for complaint if the vote-suppression laws applied only to NEW voters trying to register for the first time. But it deeply offends my sense of 'innocent until proven guilty'-- a cornerstone of American jurisprudence-- that the GOP legislatures require already registered voters to now prove they have not been committing voter fraud, in some cases for more than half a century! It's an outrage that only a desperate ideologue can support.

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BrianO | Aug 17, 2012, 03:01 PM EDT

If they are citizens whats the problem. Are you implying non whites are too stupid to know how to register to vote.

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eiriamach | Aug 16, 2012, 09:33 AM EDT

Dancing? I'm doing the Tea Party Reel! Yesterday a Pennsylvania court, in effect, told an estimated 759,000 to 1.5 million mostly-non-white, elderly, and poor citizens that they must prove their eligibility to vote before the State will allow them to cast another ballot. Add that to Ohio's voter suppression law, and the GOP has co-opted 14% of the electoral college votes needed to win the presidential election. The GOP record thus far marks a low point not seen since the days of Jim Crow. How many more shocks will send me reeling before election day?

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eiriamach | Aug 14, 2012, 11:16 PM EDT

eiriamach, dance all you want, let me ask you a question, did the justice department investigate acorn and voter fraud? or did it take a free lancing kid journalist with a hidden camera to expose acorn?

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eiriamach | Aug 14, 2012, 01:19 PM EDT

BrianO, AG Holder's May 20 speech is available of the Dept of Justice's web site. I cannot find in it any pretext for a charge of racism. He was under severe pressure for having filed only a few lawsuits and objections to state legislatures' moves to suppress voting by college students, African Americans, legal immigrants and other likely-Democrat voters. He replied to charges that the DofJ had been lax. The tone of his speech was consciousness raising, and apparently the consciousness of the Wall St. Journal-- which has never supported voting rights legislation --was raised to the point that the WSJ called the speech racist. Hogwash! Holder said in part, "Yet, in the six years since its re-authorization, Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act] has increasingly come under attack by those who claim it’s no longer needed. Between 1965 and 2010 – nearly half a century–-only 8 challenges to Section 5 were filed in court. By contrast, over the last two years alone, we’ve seen no fewer than 9 lawsuits contesting the constitutionality of that provision. Four of these currently are in litigation. Each of these challenges ... claims that we’ve attained a new era of electoral equality, that America in 2012 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965, and that Section 5 is no longer necessary.... But the reality is that, in jurisdictions across the country, both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common – and have not yet been relegated to the pages of history."

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eiriamach | Aug 14, 2012, 11:39 AM EDT

BrianO, Marilyn Buck died four days before she was due to be released on official parole. AG Holder had nothing to do with the parole decision. Buck was white. I do not see how racism figures into anything Holder did in the Buck case. Have you read any of her poetry or translations? She seems to have been clear-sighted for someone who spent most of her life in prison.

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eiriamach | Aug 14, 2012, 11:24 AM EDT

BrianO, 1. See my earlier comment about the Black Panthers: Neither the Dept. of Justice nor any court in the USA can prosecute such a case without witnesses to provide testimony UNLESS due process means nothing when the accused are black. 2. Speech to the Council of Black Churches: I have not found the entire speech, only excerpts from it. But I see no racism in Holder's words, only bloggers stirring up chants of "racist" without bothering to quote any racism from the speech. What is racist about saying "In my travels across this country, I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who–-often for the first time in their lives–-now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble ideals.” He added that challenges to established civil rights law mean that “some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance.” Voting rights is certainly one example! 3) Holder released Marilyn Buck from prison so that she could die of her advanced cancer outside prison walls. She lived three weeks after her release. That's compassion for a poet of compassion: where's the racism?

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