What Hath Newt Wrought

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Thursday September 03, 2009 · 8:08 PM PDT

2009/09/03 · 20:08

Keith Olbermann asked the question tonight... and I paraphrase, "What kind of a country have we become when a disabled woman telling her story is heckled at a townhall meeting?" Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Newt Gingrich's America. It's a very scary place and....

it's at his doorstep. HE was the one who let the crazy genie out of the bottle some 20 years ago when he was a bomb-throwing back-bencher in Congress. He used to make those speeches on the empty floor of the house ranting and raving. Newt was crazy like a fox. He did it to get on C-span because local TV would pick up the sound-bite. He knew Republicans couldn't win on the merits of their ideas.. that had all been decided during FDR and LBJ's eras. So political guerrilla theater would have to do the job instead, Newt in Congress, Rush on the radio.

It didn't stop when Newt became speaker. He was the one who turned every event into a way of bashing Democrats and liberal politics. (Remember at the time, Rush was still considered entertaining.) When Susan Smith drowned her children, it was Newt who offered the theory that she did it because of the poisonous effects of liberalism as administered by Washington's Democrats. Any publicity was good publicity, in his view.

And now we have critical mass. Twenty years of that kind of garbage being spewed by Republicans given huge mass-media outlets.... with Democrats always a day-late and a dollar short, sputtering, "wait, it's not like that -- but..."

We thought we'd beaten some of that back by electing a Democrat.. but the racists and unhinged emerged. And they're not just the town-hall finger- biters.. and gun-toters... they're the people we work with and gossip with.

Have you been on Facebook lately? Yes, there's the viral health care message... but there's also plenty of talk about the President's speech Tuesday. Perfectly-sane sounding friends and friends of friends are talking about "indoctrination" and "propaganda." The daughter of one friend is keeping her kindergartner out of school on Tuesday so she won't be exposed -- TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! It's a new kind of crazy and it can lead only to disaster.

Even when I was a child, and Nixon was President -- and HE really WAS a crook -- my parents weren't afraid of exposing us to him. A former boss whom I thought was a SANE republican can't post on facebook without turning it into something anti-Obama, be it health care, climate change, the go-to-school-and-get-good-grades-speech.

I know part of it is racism pure and simple. Remember how disdainful Republicans were about Bill Clinton? They couldn't believe that hillbilly won the White house? Now, their fury at losing to a black man has lit the fuse... paid for with corporate money.

I'm really afraid of where this is going. Someone, talk me down, here.

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