Apropos of Angry DougJ’s post below, am I alone in thinking that the obese amphibian gum disease’s constant invocation of Saul Alinsky is the second half of that rare and difficult manouver, the double dogwhistle?
I mean, the basically unhidden message within the Food Stamp President garbage is obvious enough. And throw in that Saaaaauuuul Alinskyiiiiiiiiiii, and it seems to me got the bifecta: an opponent who is at once too Black and too Jewish.
But perhaps I’m being paranoid. A former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives would never stoop so low.
Image: Greetings from Hamelin, Johanni et Pauli Sch. and S.H., 1902
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
newt gingrich doesn’t stoop.
Scott
Well, Newt’s already gone sneering at Juuuuuaaaaann Williams. I’m surprised he hasn’t already gone for a black/Hispanic/Jewish/gay/Muslim quintfecta…
Poopyman
What are Gnoot’s feelings on Sammy Davis Jr.?
4tehlulz
>too Jewish
Yeah, this is a winning formula in Florida.
The Bearded Blogger
Newt is gonna start giving republican audiences the gout, what with all that red meat…
General Stuck
Saul Alinsky is a dog whistle for left wing rabble rousing red baiting to the 27 percenters. Looks like He’s the designated soshulist devil this go around, replacing Bill Ayers, whose shelf life of right wing boogymen has apparently expired and never really worked that well, since the Kenyan has his feet propped up in the Oval Office laughing his ass off.
The Bearded Blogger
@4tehlulz: Not a bad formula for a floreida republican primary… Newt will fuck up the general when and if he gets there.
BGinCHI
I think The Blues Brothers movie said it best:
The Jew is using the black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, whitey? Just sit there? Of course not. You, are going to join with us. The members of the American, Socialist, White peoples party. An organisation of decent, law abiding white folk. Just like you.
Redshift
I have to disagree with much of the commentariat here; I just don’t see any evidence this being about the Joos. Alinsky’s name is a wingnut magic word because Obama=community organizer=Alinsky=radical=communist. I’ve never gotten the sense that they think about it in any more depth than “teleprompter!” or “ACORN!” Alinsky probably also caught on because he has a “foreign-sounding” name, but I don’t get that it sounds particularly Jewish.
BGinCHI
So…..no edit button, no b-quote and other buttons, and now in moderation!!!!
WTF is going on around this fucking blog!
Somebody wake up tech services, goddamnit.
Mike in NC
Noot has all the bases covered: blowhard, bully, and bigot.
MattF
Black, Jewish, Chicago, union, radical, et cetera. One thing about Noot is that he’s violently anti-union– bring up the subject, his face goes purple and you can see the steam coming out of his ears. No, no kidding.
Villago Delenda Est
Tom, you’re not being paranoid at all. “Saul Alinsky” hits the ears of the teabaggers who live in Florida and Super Tuesday states precisely in such a way. When Noot’s not attacking OvenMitt over his tax returns, he fires off a few rounds in the general direction of the ni*CLANG* and his Waco Kid sidekick with a name right out of a two-minutes hate from 1984.
Brachiator
Not going into Florida. Not when Newt gets $5 million from Sheldon Adelson:
And especially not when the “Obama is not a friend to Israel” mania is heating up.
Yep.
The Bearded Blogger
What are the chances of a Gingrich/Paul alliance fucking up the GOP machine? In many ways, they are like two demented racist peas in a pod…
seanindc
seriously? You understand that the guy bankrolling the newtster is one of most hard-core pro-israel dudes around, right? You think adelson is gonna put up with any closeted anti-semitism? as clay davis once said – shheeeeeiiiiittttttt
Calouste
I hate it when people don’t get addressed by their proper titles. cf.:
Former half-term governor Sarah Palin
Former too-scared-to-run-again governor Mitt Romney
beltane
@Brachiator: Just because Newt has Jewish friends and donors does not mean he is above employing anti-Semitic dogwhistles in his campaign. Nor does support of Israel. Did the GOP abandon racist dogwhistles just because Michael Steele was RNC chair?
pseudonymous in nc
@Redshift:
I can remember a wingnutty thing from 2008 about how black men got together with Jewish women in the 1960s to make Commie babies.
Ah, here it is, by Lisa Schiffren. Batshit, of course, but part of the wingnut canon.
kdaug
Built in sand before the tide.
(Would have an appropriate link if this fucking blog allowed it).
MattF
@seanindc: Adelson is probably the kind of guy who considers most Jews to be anti-Semitic. So, no love lost between him and Saul Alinsky.
Gustopher
I keep trying to figure out what the racist dog-whistle in “Lincoln-Douglas Debate” — sure, Douglas was in favor of slavery, but he lost the debates.
wrb
Not just any Back and Jewish, redistributing Black and Jewish.
Pillaging tribal warriors. Would probably rape your wimmin too, it is traditional when sacking and looting.
flukebucket
@BGinCHI:
You’re the guy with the new baby. Right? You seem a little on edge :-)
arguingwithsignposts
you know, it’s just occurred to me that alinsky has the same ring as Trotsky. might be something to think about.
ET
I wonder if it more GOP code talk – like referring to particular Bible passages. It means something to people “in the know” but for everyone else their foreheads wrinkle in confusion. I definitely think this appeals to an older demographic because younger people won’t know immediately and may not bother with looking it up (I’m 43 and have to look it up).
scav
Could almost be chosen from a random name generator, so long as the targeted audience hears and interprets it in the manner that gets their blood moving. Quite Shakespearean. Subtle meanings for those in various knows and broad slapstick for the groundlings.
trollhattan
@General Stuck:
Before the ’08 election did anybody (broadly speaking) even know who he was? Reminds me a little of Glenn Beck dredging up Woodrow Wilson to blame for the state of our nation today. That’s some stretch there, Chubby Gumby.
Raven
I get home from a root canal and see this post!
beltane
Saul Alinsky was one of those self-hating Jews the Jew-haters love to hate. If he has stuck to organizing communities of batshit crazy settlers on the West Bank then he would be a hero to the teabaggers.
trollhattan
@wrb:
I think the accepted terms are “blah” and “ewwish.”
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
Pretty much the formula for Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, too.
General Stuck
Exurban Mom
Tom is correct. Newt has a built-in difficulty in the south, even though he is from there, ironically: he is Catholic. Converted, of course, but Catholic all the same. So, in the hierarchy of “people we Southern Wingnut Republicans hate,” he has to move himself further down this list, which is roughly in order of hatred from most to least:
1. The Blah people
2. Teh Gays
3. The Jews
4. The Mormons
5. The Catholics
6. The Librul Soshalists
7. Those who wish to take away our sacred firearms.
8. The Media
9. Elitists who eat tasty lettuce and fancy mustard.
10. People who don’t like football.
Sadly, Newt is still on the list, but luckily for Newt, he’s further down than Mitt, Saul Alinsky, and President Obama.
J. Michael Neal
@seanindc: The hardcore pro-Israel types have long since abandoned any aversion to chasing the votes of anti-Semites. They’ll pander to anyone, even KKK knockoffs.
And the votes they are chasing manage to simultaneously be pro-Israel and vaguely anti-Semitic. They aren’t pro-Israel because they like the Jews. Some, though fewer than a lot of liberals think, are just chasing Armageddon and think that Israel is an integral part of it, and besides, Jesus will convert whichever Jews are deserving. The rest of them, a lot more, are pro-Israel for the sole reason that they like the idea of blowing up Muslims, and Israel is actively engaged in that. It’s why they can’t be bothered to put together a plan that would actually lead to Israel’s survival, because that would involve a truce with the Mohamedans. Can’t have that.
seanindc
@MattF: yeah but fundamentally Adelson is a guy that doesn’t have a slightest respect for people (hence owning a casino and backing newt) so I doubt that he would be comfortable with the sheeple being bright enough to make a distinction between the “good jews” and the “self-hating j-street palestine loving surrender monkeys”.
Steve
I don’t really buy it, personally. I think we go way overboard with this dogwhistle stuff sometimes.
lacp
For all that his name gets tossed around, I doubt that any of the Tea-Goobers would know who he was if Zombie Saul Alinsky crawled up their tailpipes.
beltane
Deep thought: Everything these people say is run past a focus group. “Saul Alinsky” must garner more of a reaction from the Neanderthals than say “Bill Ayers”.
BGinCHI
@flukebucket: Don’t change the subject.
I was on edge way before the baby came.
David Koch
You’re not being paranoid.
Alinsky is dog whistle about big city Jews who killed Jesus.
Mark S.
Shit, I could see Newt proposing this one:
Tom Levenson
@Brachiator: @beltane: @MattF:
Yeah, I know about the Adelson thing. But I’m inclined to go with beltane and MattF here. Pro-Israel and anti-(diaspora) Jew are not contradictions. Some of the most rabid pro-Israel members of the non-Jewish right are just waiting for Armageddon and the necessary destruction of the necessarily Jewish state to bring on end times.
And this is the thing: I don’t think Gingrich cares about Jews or Blacks or anything else; it’s simply that he knows at least some of his audience, and will say anything that resonates. And the idea of some northern Jew coming along to help a Black guy figure out how to do stuff…
Again, maybe I’m paranoid. I could be that Woody Allen character going on about the guy who asked “Jew eat?”
And maybe not.
Citizen Alan
@seanindc:
Oh come now! Israel’s strongest allies in the U.S. are fundamentalist Christians whose support for Israel is driven primarily by their belief that all the Jews have to be gathered in Israel in time for Jesus to come back and exterminate them all. And you know what? No one in the Israeli government has ever balked at accepting support from people driven by such an apocalyptic anti-Semitism. Since Newt Gingrich does not really hate Jews on principle and since Sheldon Adelson certainly knows this, I don’t see why Adelson is going to be particularly worried about the occasional anti-Semitic dog whistle if the end result is to get a Republican president far more favorable to the Likudnik agenda than Obama. And yes, “Saul Alinsky” is an anti-Semitic dog whistle, both in the name itself (which screams JEWEY JEW to conservative ears) and in the fact that Alinsky was a leftist, which plays into Bircher fears that all Jews have communist leanings. Or have you forgotten that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion expressly paints the entire history of communism as the creation of Jewish Supremacists.
Suffern ACE
@Redshift:
I didn’t, but then I grew up in an area populated with Polish immigrants, so names in with Sky or Ski don’t sound all that foreign either.
jacy
@trollhattan:
I LOL’d, but I’m heavy on the cold medicine right now.
Benjamin Franklin
@Tom Levenson:
No, Joo?
Steeplejack
Gingrich doesn’t expect anyone in his audience to actually know who Saul Alinsky is. It’s enough that their ears prick up at the sound of “Saul”–Jewish!–and “Alinsky“–Russian! Ergo: Communist! Then all Gingrich has to do is mention Obama somewhere within a few sentences’ proximity and he’s got the trifecta.
David Koch
@beltane: that’s because “saul alinsky” is far more “ethnic” sounding then William Aires. Hell, William Aires sound down right Aryan, while Sol Alinsky sounds like a butcher at pastrami deli in the lower east side.
Jewish Steel
I think you just wrote the text for the flyers for my shows this year. Full service blog!
beltane
@Steeplejack: That’s all it is really. Plus, as someone mentioned upthread, “Alinsky” sounds enough like “Trotsky” for the two to be confused in the poorly educated, Fox News-addled wingnut mind.
rlrr
an opponent who is at once too Black and too Jewish.
and too Muslim (neat trick) and to Kenyan.
Angry DougJ
@Tom Levenson:
I don’t think you’re paranoid. As someone said, Newt doesn’t talk much about Eugene Debbs.
Another angle is that for people like Adelson, there may be no contradiction. I am always surprised by how much some right-wing Jews like Jew-baiting when it’s aimed at left-wing Jews. Jen Rubin’s piece on “Why Jewish Women Hate Palin” is a classic of this genre. Deeply offensive.
Villago Delenda Est
@rlrr:
Atheist Muslim.
Yeah, I know. Go figure. It’s like saying someone’s wife is a thespian who has performed the act in front of a paying audience. Low information (and vocabulary) voters are pretty easy to hornswaggle, and Noot knows this and uses it to his tactical advantage.
kdaug
@Jewish Steel: So some of you fuckers can still blockquote?
What are you using?
Firefox 9.0.1/Win 7 Ultimate local.
Mnemosyne
So John Boehner complained today that Obama ran in 2008 saying, “I’m not going to be a divider, I’m going to be a uniter,”
Bush II really has been thoroughly purged from the Republican memory, hasn’t he? Next up, Boehner accuses Obama of ignoring memos saying “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.”
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry, forgot my linky to Washington Monthly.
DanielX
@Tom Levenson:
You:
Newt:
How low I stoop is irrelevant. I am a Man Of Destiny, and any means justify my ends.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: I’m assuming Bin Laden will speak at the GOP convention and denounce Obama as a liar.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
See, I told you that electing Bill Clinton to third and fourth terms was not a good idea.
rlrr
@Brachiator:
And especially not when the “Obama is not a friend to Israel” mania is heating up.
Other than not publicly fellating Netanyahu, what has Obama done that is so different than any of his predecessor?
trollhattan
@jacy:
Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Try the ‘Tussin!
General Stuck
While the right wing has some anti semites on its fringes, it is generally bad GOP politics to attack Jews in national political campaigns directly or with dog whistles. There is a wealth of info on the right’s thinking about Alinsky, and it is political in nature, and directly related to their fears of liberalism/the collective. I don’t think we need to scream bigotry, when the evidence does not support the connection. But to each their own, if you really gotta.
Keith G
I doubt this matters at all. I have yet to see a way that Gingrich wins the nomination, dog whistles or not. Even if he were to do so, he would face roughly the same math as Romney.
Most of the electorate seems to be already committed to a vote (for/against Obama). Is the uncommitted more than 10% of the electorate? Judging by their demographics, it seems the uncommitted will more likely be swayed by policy and not whistles of any kind. The dolts who are going to buy into the coded speak of both Gingrich and Romney were never going to vote for Obama no how.
So let’s talk about policy.
ruemara
I think you guys are unwilling to allow that a bigot can have to different trains of thought operating at the same time. There’s hating on jews and then there’s hating on those jews who say things we disagree with. Like there’s those negros and our negros.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
If Alinsky’s name had been Sam Brown, Newt would never mention him.
Steeplejack
@kdaug:
Blockquote test:
Let’s
mashpress “Submit” and see what happens.jl
Don’t have time to look for it, but a commenter on I Speak Wingnut post, I think, noted that George Romney has a Saul Alinksy problem.
Looks like Romney Sr met with Saul Alinsky and representatives of minorty community after racial turmoil back the day. A Democrat chickened out, but George Romney met with them and told other GOPper that they should meet with them too.
Interesting.
Mitt fell vary far from the parental tree, seems to me.
General Stuck
I personally think Newt Gingrinch hates everyone who is not Newt Gingrinch, so could there be some of that hate for Jews, certainly so.
rlrr
@Villago Delenda Est:
Among evangelical/fundie Christians there is a common belief that Muslims and atheists are working together to make the USA a secular country (I know, it doesn’t make sense to me, either).
RalfW
I weirdly look on the bright side of this one.
As with the bullshit claims that Obama is a soc1al-ist, tossing out Alynski’s name will do much to get the younger, GOP-disliking generation to actually check him out.
It is interesting how those under 30 seem more open to the idea of soc1al-ism than any generation in a long time (though they most likely have a weak sense of what that ideology really means).
Alynski has a lot to teach about organizing and power. Newt mocks it because it can work, not because it sounds Jewish (though that may be a dog whistle bonus on his side of the fence).
Steeplejack
@kdaug:
Blockquote works for me. I’m using Firefox 9.0.1 with Windows XP. In the comment above this one I used the “b-quote” button above the comment box, although usually I type in the blockquote commands manually.
I didn’t see your failed comment, but you didn’t fall into the “forgot to put underscores between paragraphs of a multi-graph blockquote” heresy, did you?
Oh, yeah, and FYWP.
Cermet
Yes –
we can – system 7 virus
DanielX
OT but….
I can’t tell from David Brooks’ latest effort whether he’s breathtakingly cynical or truly ignorant. In his case, a distinction without a difference…
freelancer
@Redshift:
This. It’s also an amalgam of the ingnorance of the Right Wing.
Here’s a leader of the DFH’s who wrote a book called “Rules for Radicals”. Hello?! Radicals! Lefty Radicals who were around during the sixties and helped the Weather Underground oppress the FBI and the blessed Nixon administration. They bombed government offices the same way no nuthin’ telePromptbama bombs the Constitushun every day! Obamber runs this country just like the Chicago corrupt mayors and Chicago politics the thuggish crony union appeasers except for the cops that beat up the radical infiltrators in ’68.
Alinsky is 2012’s Bill Ayers. In the mind of the wingnut, there is no daylight in between them.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
Saul Alinsky was in fact Jewish, raised in an Orthodox family in fact, although I think his surname is Russian.
He definitely wasn’t a socia1ist, though, according to Wikipedia. His activism was definitely populist, but he himself wasn’t the kind to put his trust in any ideology and never joined a political party.
I simply don’t get the fuss about the supposed link between him and Obama. They never met; Obama was a 10-year-old living in Hawaii when Alinsky died. Hillary Clinton arguably has more of an intellectual link to Alinsky, whose activism was the subject of her senior honors thesis. Nobody calls her a socia1ist.
Lojasmo
@Redshift:
“Saul Alinsky”. Are you kidding me? Your Jewdar needs recalibrated.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid:
Hahahahah! Now *that’s* comedy!
David Koch
New York mags says Obama is toooo Jewish
They do have a point, after all, Barak is a Hebrew word
Villago Delenda Est
@rlrr:
Well, I don’t know of any Muslim Founding Fathers, but the Deists are pretty much for all practical purposes, to the fundigelicals, at least, atheists, so there’s that.
Madison was not kidding about that “no religious test” stuff he insisted be embedded in the basic text of the Constitution. Which is a part they strain to ignore. This was MEANT to be a secular country from day one.
Amir Khalid
My comment #76 was intended as a reply to Redshift #9. I don’t know how it got addressed to General Stuck #6.
Mark S.
Noot’s tax plan (sounds pretty similar to Perry’s):
It’s even more dramatic for the top 0.1%, who would get an average tax cut of almost $2 mil.
Mitt Romney’s tax returns are really the gift that keeps on giving. From now on, every tax cut proposal should judged on what it does to Mitt’s taxes.
Steeplejack
@Keith G:
For what it’s worth, big-time game theorist and strategic consultant Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, author of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics, was on Colbert last night and predicted that Gingrich will win the nomination (but lose the general election).
seanindc
@Citizen Alan: I hear ya, I’m just not buyin it. These are the same guys that are still going after Grover Norquist for speaking at a Muslim conference. GROVER F’N NORQUIST! While I do get what you’re saying about Adelson being pragmatic enough to tell the difference between anti-semitism and a bit of congenial aryan rabble rousing by the newtster, the people that adelson interact with on a philanthropic level may not be as forgiving.
redshirt
SOROS!
I laugh (sadly) everytime I see a Wingnut rage against SOROS, when I know they have little idea who it is. I’d like to respond “KOCH!”, but they don’t care, so why bother?
General Stuck
@Amir Khalid:
Back before I started commenting at BJ, I spent a lot of time trolling wingnut blogs stirring up the shit. It was most fascinating, the conspiracy theories that were deeply held and detailed in the wingnuttosphere, related to Hillary Clinton being a ChiCom double agent commie. On the old Captain Quarters, there was one guy, who had created an entire world of suspicious Hillary behaviors, highly researched for basic trivia on her time as first lady, puzzled into highly insane diatribes of treasonous double dealing of the Clinton’s involving China, but especially Hillary.
Jay C
@rlrr:
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, this is true. Madison tried to avoid any proclamations that had religious over or undertones. Tried to discourage public paid Congressional and military chaplains, though did not do anything vigorous to stop it after his efforts failed.
Sorry to be slacker but no links handy right now.
Get on google scholar search and start with Madison AND chaplain AND (Congress OR Military). or similar. You should find some articles about it after a few tries.
phantomist
@jl:
It’s from Buzzfeed:
But Obama isn’t the only candidate with one-degree-of-separation ties to Alinsky. In his biography of Romney’s father, Michigan Governor George Romney, T. George Harris wrote in his book “Romney’s Way” that the elder Romney and Alinsky met after the Detroit riots of 1967.
When slum organizer Saul Alinsky, with the West Side Organization’s militant Negroes and clerics, wanted to meet with the white Detroit rulers, Romney indirectly arranged the meeting, and attended. Democratic Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh avoided the rough company.
“I think you ought to listen to Alinsky,” Romney told his reluctant white friends. ‘It seems to me that we are always talking to the same people. Maybe the time has come to hear new voices.” Said an Episcopal bishop, ‘He made Alinsky sound like a Republican.
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: Nope, just a murderer, and that slur that’s never gotten old since people noticed that Eleanor didn’t spend very much time with FDR, lesbian.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
Well, nobody who’s sane calls Hillary a socia1ist.
Mark S.
@Mark S.:
Mitt Romney needs to have skin in the game!
Brachiator
@Tom Levenson:
Sorry, you have to look beyond the appeal to the Tea Party and Christianist extreme.
Adelson and his wife are extreme pro-Israel partisans. To suggest that they are going to fund someone who is going to pander strongly to the Armageddon crowd doesn’t fly. To the contrary, didn’t we see Newt bragging that he could replace the Iranian government in a matter of weeks? This warms the heart of the “Islam is a mortal threat to Israel” crowd. And central to this fantasy is the notion that Obama is too weak or too Mooslim to help Israel.
@rlrr:
You clearly have not been paying attention. The rancid belief among the most hard core right wing Israelis is that Obama, being black and Mooslim, is fundamentally incapable of being a friend to Israel.
And I am quite frankly surprised that there has not been more outrage over this despicable “thinking exercise.”
Mark S.
@Amir Khalid:
Hey, man, you don’t live in America. There’s a reason why we talk about the 27% all the time!
Jewish Steel
@kdaug: Chrome. With Stylish running in the background. I never removed it after the great reply drought of ’11.
liberal
@seanindc:
Huh? It has nothing to do with how anti-Semitic you are, and everything to do with how “pro-Israel” you are.
The Christian nutjobs could hate Jews with a passion, but as long as they “support Israel” (even if for weird theological reasons), they’re “OK”.
I’m not exactly sure what Grover’s sins in this regard are (though apparently he has a Palestinian wife), but presumably it’s insufficient fealty to Israel, not anything related to bigotry against Jewish persons.
Keith G
Almost on topic:
I suspect most of you are on the White House email list. If you are not, I just got an item from good friend David Plouffe. In part:
jacy
That’s when my ancestors came to America. Or not. Look I can blockquote. I still can’t edit, damnit.
I’m using Firefox something or other and seem to be rapidly loosing my ability to type in a coherent manner, (I think I need a cheat sheet for mixing sudafed with whatever the hell else I took), so an edit function sure would be sweet about now.
I’d don’t know from teh Jewish, so I’m waiting for Gingrich to dogwhistle against either the Irish or the Scandanavians so that I can muster up what little righteous indignation he hasn’t already wrung out of me.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
I don’t think Alinsky’s name is intended to invoke Jews, but rather ROOSHIANS. It’s the -sky bit that matters. Communism you know. Those evil Reds under the White House bed and so on and so forth.
MikeJ
@kdaug:
Yes, but I lost the toolbar a few weeks ago and have to manually add tags now.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I tried that once. It hurt. Never again.
EconWatcher
I have to say this, in explaining why the wingnuts get so crazy about this Saul Alinsky kind of stuff:
When I went to college and law school in the 1980s, I knew what a community organizer was. I knew who Saul Alinsky was. I knew who Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward were.
These were people associated with the (non-communist) far left, or what passed for a far left in the United States. They advocated poor people’s movements to create social change. Some but not certainly not all of them were also explicitly into Marx, but there was a vague Marxian whiff about their thinking.
Never, in a million years, could I have imagined that someone from that milieu would be elected president of the United States, and never in a billion years if he were black. Did anyone here ever think that a background as a community organizer was a good resume-builder to become president?
Barack Obama is simply an extraordinary person who rewrote all the rules. He is a guy who would make it to the top no matter where he started. He is also someone who I suspect was at one time pretty far left but is now, genuinely, center-left and in many ways pro-business.
But put yourself in the shoes of a wingut, particularly an older wingnut: This is exactly the kind of guy they should be able to redbait into oblivion, based on their prior experience. Easy pickin’s. But redbaiting, like gay bashing, has simply lost its punch. With the Soviet Union long gone, no one cares if Obama might have rubbed shoulders along the way with some hard-left types.
This rewriting of the rules rocks their wingnut world and drives them insane. No red-baiting? No gay-bashing? Do we any standards at all any more?
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
ha ha ha I know BDM the bad boy of game theory. He is a bit like Krystol so take his prediction with a grain of salt!
Villago Delenda Est
@liberal:
Insufficient fealty to Israel is tantamount to being a guard at Auschwitz nowadays.
trollhattan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
Too bad for the wingers that Putin wasn’t born here. He’d be the perfect Republican presidentail candidate.
trollhattan
Now where’s that edit command, again?
“presidentail” sounds like what we’d nickname Preznit Newt.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Not saying I bought it. He came across as a bit of a self-satisfied douche on the show.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: The latest fad among the Israeli far-right is to refer to liberal Israelis, such as women who don’t dress with sufficient modesty, as Nazis. These lunatics are the ones the Republicans support.
4tehlulz
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: You don’t run into many Russians named Saul, though.
Besides, to the Bircher crowd, the Jews created communism, so there’s that.
Brachiator
@Keith G: Very cool info on the president’s speech. I notice that Laurene Powell Jobs is sitting in the First Lady’s Box and the SOTU Address.
Keith G
@Steeplejack: I hear ya, but over a small sample size anyone can seem to be a winner, eg Newt, Tebow. However as the data points increase, results tend to return to the mean. I am not saying nominee Newt is impossible, just not likely.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@4tehlulz:
I suspect that given the constant squawks of Soc.ial.ism from FucksNews the teabagging mind is pretty well prepared to hear a Russian name and make the connection. (Saul is perhaps a bit of a bonus for the Talibangelical mind, given his status as the enemy of the good king David).
kdaug
@Steeplejack: It did. How did you do it?
Lojasmo
@kdaug: @kdaug:
Safari iOS 5.x
MikeJ
@kdaug:
I too have been missing the blockquote (and other html buttons) on ffox 9.0.1. Restarted with a fresh profile and it’s back. Now to start loading extensions and scripts and see where it breaks.
Steeplejack
@kdaug:
See here.
Steeplejack
@kdaug:
Further info: If you’re missing the “b-quote” button, you can create the blockquote manually. Should look like this:
EL
This is absolutely a dog whistle to the 27%. I read Freerepublic and Saul Alinsky is a big subject there, although most of the rest of us had no idea who he was. Over in freeperland he is now code for denigrating any tactic they don’t like, or any tactic that the dems use that’s successful, or any tactic anyone other than a “conservative” uses that gets a result the freepnuts don’t like.
Linda Featheringill
Wiki says:
Linda Featheringill
Alinsky:
Ahh! I’m late to the game. Oh, well.
Anoniminous
Rules for Radicals is a very good book. A Must Read for anyone politically engaged.
chopper
this fucker is a virtuoso. he’s like james galway on the dog whistle.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Call me naive or stupid, but I don’t see it. Like I’ve said here before, I used to hang out with a fundie crowd years ago, and I’ve never gotten the antisemetic vibe from them. Granted, I’m not Jewish, but in this case I don’t think I’d have to be: they wore their hatred for other religions on their sleeves. The Catholic-hating, the Mormon-hating, the silly-native-religions (Hinduism, animist tradition, etc) hating, DEFINITELY and above all the Muslim-hating… they just couldn’t get enough out of telling you just how much their religion rocked and all these other ones (every one of them in turn individually) was some sort of Satanic plot to lead people astray.
Never heard them tear into the Jews that way, not once. And I never heard anything in line with apocalyptic prophecies. When the subject came up, their statements were usually in line with Old Testament, ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought – Jews are God’s Chosen People and therefore whatever they want in the Middle East belongs to them, and sure, they don’t have the whole truth, and you should still try to convert them if you get the chance, but they’re still in their own special category.
Bill Arnold
@Keith G:
Can Newt win the northern state primaries, or California? (Seems unlikely but I haven’t checked the polling.)
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
Why on Earth not?!? Being Jewish, I assume Adelson doesn’t actually believe Armageddon is really going to happen, and certainly least not as envisioned by the American Christian Right. So why shouldn’t he be willing to use the superstitious beliefs of ignorant, bible-thumping peasants to his own ends?
Death Panel Truck
@ET: Nobody knows or gives a fuck who Saul Alinski is beyond the nuttiest of the wingnuts.
Cacti
For anyone born after 1970, 99 percent of the respondents will wonder…
Who the f**k is Saul Alinsky?
Gnewt’s still campaigning like it’s 1980.
El Cid
As others have noted, the “Commie-Agitator-Outsider-Subversive-Foreign-Sounding-Revolutionary” part of “Alinsky” is a lot more of the call & response than “Jewish”.
Sure, it’s there, but the sound of the name “Alinsky” is threatening in its foreigner and “Russian” aspects alone.
Cowbelle
@General Stuck: Yep, Saul Alinsky is the Bill Ayers of 2012.
El Cid
@Cacti: But that’s the point of a lot of the wingnut threatosphere — you don’t have to know what they’re talking about as long as it sounds threatening enough that the Morlocks grasp through pheromones that it’s their job to hate and fear the mentioned threat-person or threat-group or threat-act and talk about it as if they knew it.
Peter A
Alinsky is almost certainly a Polish name, not Russian. Traditional Russian names end in -ov/ev (Ivanov, Khruschev, Nabakov, Romanov, Gorbachev, Brezhnev, etc. ). Polish names typically end in -“ski” – Kaczynski, Gronkowski, Gostkowski, Jaworski, etc. And most American Jews of East European descent have roots in what is now Poland, Ukraine or Belarus. Very few Jews lived in Russia proper before 1918. Not that wingnuts would care…
Peter A
As others have noted, the “Commie-Agitator-Outsider-Subversive-Foreign-Sounding-Revolutionary” part of “Alinsky” is a lot more of the call & response than “Jewish”.
I disagree completely. Steve Alinsky or Mike Alinsky would register to most people as salt of the earth Chicago Polish Reagan Democrats. It is the “Saul” that is the dog whistle.
sherparick
Actually, Newt goes for a lovely triple twist where Obama is both to Black (Food Stamp President), to Jewish – Foreign radical (Saul Alinsky), and anti-Israel/anitsemitic Islamic anti-colonial Kenyan (since he is not bombing the hell out of Iran). That the 27% heads just don’t explode with all this crap marinating in their tiny headds is somewhat amazing.