The Politics Of Fear

Every class has one of those kids who opens his mouth and says what everyone else is thinking. The GOP has Bill Kristol.

“[Obama’s] riding a wave of euphoria. She [Clinton] needs to puncture it. The way you puncture euphoria is reality, or to be more blunt, fear. I recommend to Senator Clinton the politics of fear.

I sincerely promise to stop pointing out that Republicans and terrorists want exactly the same thing (you, scared shitless) as soon as it stops being so blatantly true.

Lapel Pin Patriotism, Round Two

I thought we had already dispatched this nonsense once, but it appears to have resurfaced with Nedra Pickler’s insightful piece:

Sen. Barack Obama’s refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism.

Doing due diligence to get the story right, Nedra goes to an expert for his opinion:

The AP’s Nedra Pickler asks disgraced Republican dirty-trickster Roger Stone for his opinion. Stone you’ll remember is the guy who got caught making threatening phone calls to New York Gov. Spitzer’s (D-NY) elderly father and last month set up an anti-Hillary group with the acronym C-U-N-T.

Surprisingly enough, Stone thinks the answer is yes.

Since Obama and the Democrats seem to have such a big problem with patriotism and lapel pins, I guess we need to have yet another photo montage of prominent Republicans demonstrating how to wear a lapel pin. Here goes:

Rick Renzi (R-AZ), recently indicted on multiple counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and insurance fraud, looks positively patriotic with his lapel pin.

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Always the dapper and patriotic dresser, Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) displays his lapel pin after having his house raided by the Feds after a two-year investigation.

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No one can deny that Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) doesn’t make a statement with this lapel pin. Sadly, the Duke’s fashion choices are now limited as he is incarcerated for up to ten years after pleading guilty to tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud. Come 2016, the Duke will no doubt be modeling his patriotism in the form of a dashing lapel pin once again.

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Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) looks tanned and very patriotic with his red hair and blue suit and patriotic lapel pin. Sadly, his red hair might be gray before he can once again get the perfect tan, as he is currently serving a prison term for conspiracy to defraud the United States and for a charge of falsifying financial disclosure forms.

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Former Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) is dressed to impress with this lapel pin. Taft plead no contest to multiple misdemeanors.

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Larry Craig looks positively magnificent as he models this doubly patriotic lapel pin during his mug shot for a widely discussed bathroom incident.

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You know, now that I think about it, maybe it isn’t that big of a deal whether or not Obama wears a lapel pin.

*** Update ***

Oh NOES! Obama may or may not have worn “Muslim-like gear.” I sure hope the sweet dears at Sweetness and Light don’t see this:

President Bush in Africa, embracing brown people doing a “Death to America” tribal dance.

Seriously, these people are ridiculous.

The GOP Nightmare

Isn’t terrorism, despite all the hand-wringing from the serious people and their bedwetting allies in the blogosphere. This is the real GOP nightmare:

Hillary Clinton apparently thought that she had a killer sound bite during Thursday’s debate when she ripped Barack Obama as a promoter of “change your can Xerox.”

Instead, the audience booed, critics winced and once again the New York senator’s attempt to demonize her rival fell flat, another illustration of how 2008, at least so far, is the year that negative campaigning just doesn’t work as it once did.

“It looks like people are just burned out on that stuff,” said Peter W. Schramm, the executive director of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs in Ohio.

In state after state, voters said they moved from Clinton to Obama — or, on the Republican side, from Mitt Romney to John McCain or Mike Huckabee — partly because they were tired of what seemed like politics as usual.

Without negative campaigning, the GOP has- well, nothing, really. They have no new ideas. They have unattractive candidates. Their standard-bearer is someone who can easily be tied to many (if not most) of the disastrous policies of the Bush administration, someone who has gone out of his way to seek part ownership of the extremely unpopular war in Iraq, and someone who gets less attractive by day as reporters suddenly begin to examine his record. No amount of straight talk can insulate McCain from the party of Bush, Cheney, and DeLay, and now negative campaigning, dragging down the Democratic candidate, may not work.

And that has got to scare the shit out of them.

Who Would Al Qaeda Want To Win The White House?

Let’s think about that for a minute. The last time I checked those guys who attacked us are sitting snug in their Pakistan safe haven while America spends its blood, treasure and credibility stirring chaos in a country that bin Laden meant to chaosify himself if we hadn’t done it for him. Bin Laden attacked America dreaming that it would tie us down in a bloody war of occupation. He had an outside hope, kind of a three-wall bank shot, that we’d manhandle civilians badly enough to inflame the muslim world.

Mishun Accomplishd

We could stay in Iraq or we could leave. Either way we have a wrecked army, no credibility and just the kind of chaos in Iraq that bin Laden couldn’t dream of accomplishing without our help.

It’s hard to deny that Republicans and radical Islamists have a symbiotic relationship that bin Laden would sorely miss. When al Qaeda wants to sell the idea that the west is at war with Islam, what could help more than prominent administration figures reflecting and reinforcing the terrorists’ medieval rhetoric almost word for word? Synchronicity! It’s sadly comical that the rightwing screamosphere and their political allies still have not figured out that you don’t effectively oppose someone by joining the fight on their terms.

More than rhetoric, the GOP-al Qaeda marriage of convenience really hinges on fear. Terror, after all, is the point of terrorism. It’s simple psychological fact that fear is a terrible state of mind for decision making. If you want an enemy to make a rash decision that catastrophically hurts their position the best thing you can do is scare the hell out of them. Bin Laden planned to draw America into an Afghan war that could wrap up America’s activities abroad as effectively as he’d done to the Soviets, or just drive out of the mideast altogether, by provoking us into lashing out in fear.

He pretty clearly screwed that pooch on that bet, but after the Afghan setback hits just kept on coming for Osama bin Laden. How could he know that the Bush GOP also thrives on fear in America? Iraq was like manna from heaven. Abu Ghraib a gift. Terrorists don’t really hate America for our freedoms (they usually cite Israel and our support of dictators like Murbarak and the Sauds) but our open, easy-assimilating society is still a problem. Unlike European muslims who live under a constant cloud of suspicion and daily reminders of their own alien-ness, those in America often mix into the melting pot before the ink dries on their green card. Our accomodating attitude makes it much harder to take the radical clash-of-civilizations message seriously. Losing that edge over Europe (thanks, Michelle Malkin!) is great for fundies and very bad news for Muslim, how do you say, liberals.

What is the ultimate policy agenda of fear? Surveillance, unrestricted police power, torture, rigged trials and unlimited detentions. As the famous National Review cruiser put it,

“The liberals don’t believe in the constitution. They don’t believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive,”

In reality hyperpowered executives usually make stupid or self-serving decisions that don’t serve the national interest in any way. That’s why the founders didn’t trade one king for another. We can even test the point – having had its way without the faintest hint of oversight the Bush admin has acted as the ultimate Strong Executive for six plus years. How is that rightwing utopia working out for us? Every Bush initiative I can think of has turned out no better than if we’d assigned the same job to six or seven functionally retarded chimpanzees. Fear breeds unrestrained executive power, unrestrained power leads to boneheaded egodriven decisions, graft and endless embarrassing screwups.

So FOX wants to know who al Qaeda supports in the election. The answer should be obvious. They’re terrorists. Al Qaeda wants fear to win.

Four more years.

***Update***

Heh. Indeed.