My Friday rant today is pointed right at the heart of the GOP leadership. For the most part, I've been amused at the crazy rantings coming from the Right these days, but for some reason, this whole "Obama is indoctrinating your kids" meme has put me at my final straw.
Here's my simple rule for you, GOP leaders:
Until you can, with confidence, reject the wingnutty talking points, rather than promote them...you need to get off the national stage and shut the hell up.
Here's why. You're not doing America any good at all by engaging in these kind of tactics. All you are doing is lowering the collective IQ of Americans.
Let's look at the facts. Since the President began running last year, we have had the following manufactured "controversies":
* Rev. Wright
* Obama's a secret Muslim
* Obama pals around with terrorists
* Obama wasn't born here
* Obama wants to kill grandma
* Obama is a socialist
* Obama is a Nazi/Hitler
* Obama is a facist
* Obama wants to suck your childrens' brains dry
I know there is more, but honestly, I only have the time to deal with so much ridiculousness.
Each and every time you have manufactured a controversy, you've been shown to be out of your gourd. Obama still wins an election by a huge margin, still has the support of most of the people, and those people still think you guys are nuts.
One little tip, too: Obama can't be socialist, fascist and a Nazi all at once. Pick one. Those are all political philosophies that were different in some way.
Better yet, drop the whole socialist/fascist/Nazi thing. I mean, are you serious? Everytime I hear this, I think of the people who lived under Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Kim Jung Il, Milosovic, and countless other brutal dictators throughout history, and I think:
Shame on you. Shame on you for disrespecting people who suffered TRUE oppression.
Fact is, if we were a socialist/fascist/Nazi country suddenly, under Obama, you wouldn't get to scream and yell and stomp your feet at town halls. You wouldn't get Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh to do your bidding. All of them would have been "disappeared" by now.
I don't think I need to remind you that the prior President hand picked his audiences and essentially prevented any dissent at his town halls. But I will anyway, just to hammer the point home further.
But more than disrespecting those who lived, suffered, and DIED under those regimes, you disrespect the American people even more. The ones who elected this man President. The 80% of Americans who are rational enough to know that your tripe doesn't sell very well.
So stop manufacturing controversies, start laying out YOUR vision for America. Stop endorsing and promoting false memes in a failed attempt to paint Obama something you KNOW he isn't. Stop this "well I haven't seen the birth certificate, so I don't if he is a natural born citizen or not" garbage. Listen to yourself. Do you even REALIZE how dumb you sound?
It didn't used to be this way. It used to be that even if you were in the other party, and you were a Senator or a Congressman that had earned some respect, and you heard a ridiculous rumor about the President's birth certificate, you'd say:
"Yes, I heard that rumor, and it's untrue and has no place in our politics. I want to talk about my party's vision for America, and while it is at odds with our President's, we can disagree and debate it without getting into rubbish like this."
Sorta like John McCain did last year, to a lesser extent, when crazy "Obama is a Muslim" lady asked him a question.
Until you guys are willing to do that, I won't even bother giving you the time of day. Something tells me, though, the reason you endorse this crap wholeheartedly is that you DON'T have a vision for America...except to sow dangerous division.
So on behalf of the rational Americans out there, my message to you is this:
Grow up, or shut the hell up.
Until then, we won't be listening.