The right has been casting about for a "Swift-Boat" advertisement for 2012.
First, an advertizing campaign featuring clips freom the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright was considered. That approach was dropped, but only after there was enough television coverage to guarantee that many voters identified Barach Obama with Wright's most ill-considered comments.
Here the video that the Far Right now thinks should be run on television, especially Fox News-- their main propaganda outlet.Perhaps it will not be aired, but it clearly reveals the core of Republican strategy.
http://www.youtube.com/...
The strategy is to appeal to people's natural fear of the "OTHER." In this case it is a long video that slices and dices Obama videos to make him sound like a Muslim.
The creators of the video also objected to his showing respect for Islam or reciting indisputable historical facts about Islam's contribution to civilization. These unenlightened folks would prefer that every Muslim think the United States of America is at war with Islam. That way, more terrorists would be recruited, and more young American men and women would die.
What short-sightedness--what hatred!
One part of the film says Obama proclaimed this a Muslim nation. Of course, he did not say this. The context of his remarks was abused.
This video is really an effort to plug into the paranoia and hatred that inspired the Birthers and folks that said Obama was a Muslim and a Socialist. It also cashes in on biological racism as well as soft racism, the mistaken notion that there is something wrong with African-American culture. Of course, we should not be suggesting that racisism has anything to do with hatred of Obama and the fact that guns are flying off of store shelves.
These appeals to paranoia and rage completely neutralize the reasoning faculties of all too many people. Nazi psychiatrists and propagandists studied this phenomenon and perfected ways to exploit it.
For example, today's appeals to hatred and fear prevent people from seeing that in the early Clinton years Republicans invented the individual mandate as a means of combatting HillaryCare. Now, the individual mandate is a sign of socialism, unless it is the particular individual mandate pioneered by Willard Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.
Demonization and use of the "Other" arguments have made it possible to peddle all sorts of lies. Obama trimmed $500 billion from future increases in Medicare spending without reducing coverage one bit. But Republicans said he reduced present spending by that amount. Democrats do not even bother to correct such obvious lies.
Now Republicans say Mitt Romney created more jobs at Bain Capital than did Obama. The record is clear. Obama has created 4,200,000 jobs and stopped a looming depression in its tracks. Romney says Obama created no jobs and is responsible for every job lost since January 20, 2009.
No reasonable person could believe either of these Republican claims. But demonization, use of the "Other" strategy, and fears of a pluralistic America have rendered a huge part of out population immune to reason. The election will reveal how many "Independents" have also been blinded by fear and rage.
One thing is clear. People who use these ugly strategies have contempt for democracy-- but that is the subject of future blogs.