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Rise of the political bogeyman

Impotent on the issues, the GOP turns to scare tactics. Be afraid!
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN  |  November 3, 2008

081031_boogieman_main1

America's 25 scariest conservatives: Who will hold the most sway over the right-wing message machine in 2009, and beyond? By David S. Bernstein.

On his evening-drive radio talk show, WTKK-FM’s Jay Severin recently advised his listeners on how to deal with a Barack Obama presidency, which he increasingly considers inevitable. Severin’s prescription: use any means available to hinder the administration’s ability to operate. Stay on the attack, with any and all complaints and accusations and protests, to gum up the works and prevent Obama and the Democratic-led Congress from accomplishing anything on their “radical,” “socialist” agenda. 

“Our job is to undermine him in every possible legal way . . . undermine and destroy his political ability to govern or to have any hope of a successful administration,” Severin expounded on his blog, comparing the task to Colonial minutemen resisting King George. “Start destroying Barack Obama['s] political credibility . . . until he gets elected on November 4th, and, even harder, every day, every minute, and every second after.”

The Republican Party appears headed to a second straight national pummeling, which will leave it marginalized in the federal government and an increasing number of state houses, as well as out of the Oval Office. Many party faithful are already noting the need for the GOP to move back toward the moderate center to survive; to refocus on a reasonable policy agenda, rather than a series of absolutist beliefs and paranoid accusations.

As Severin’s comments indicate, the conservatives with microphones are heading down a very different path — and their followers, who now dominate the Republican Party, are going right with them.

Rush Limbaugh has proclaimed that a John McCain loss will prove the failure of “big-tent” conservativism, and demonstrate the need for greater ideological rigor. Sean Hannity has essentially proclaimed the upcoming election an ACORN-rigged illegitimacy. The most popular conservative Web sites, publications, and voices — National Review Online, Free Republic, Michelle Malkin — obsessively traffic in the most slanderous and crackpot Obama theories, from his supposed lack of US citizenship to William Ayers’s alleged ghost-authorship of Obama’s books.

None of this is new to Republican politics. Indeed, the Republican Party seems stuck in the 1970s, rallying the “silent majority,” as Richard Nixon called his voters in 1969, against the counterculture: radical Vietnam protesters (Ayers), subversive socialists (“spreading the wealth”), Black Power movements (Reverend Jeremiah Wright), permissive free-love advocates (“teaching sex to kindergarteners”), and abortionists (“partial-birth” procedure).

Fortunately, these tropes seem no longer to sway American voters. Perhaps that represents a major change in the electorate, or maybe people realize that such serious times require something more than inane rhetoric. Either way, the populace appears poised to elect Obama by a wide margin next week, and to further stack both chambers of the US Congress with Democrats.

But, as moderate Republicans flee the GOP Village of the Damned, they are leaving the zombies in ever-greater control of the party — and freer than ever to practice their scariest bogeyman tactics.

These radical right-wing creatures now dominate the party’s nominating process, committees, elected officials, organizers, and funders, at the national, state, and local levels, throughout the country.

They are not thoughtful people interested in influencing policy debates; these terrifyingly ignorant hard-liners hold a know-nothing set of rigid beliefs about capitalism, foreign policy, “social values,” criminal justice, immigration, and pretty much anything else that arises. The ideology pumped into their brains is as wrong-headed as the Red Scare promoted by Joe McCarthy, or the racism behind Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

The Limbaugh “dittoheads” have stormed GOP headquarters and devoured dissenters. As political columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote this past week in the Washington Post, “the cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet, and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity — and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.” And let’s not forget robocalls.

Buckley, who died earlier this year, once said that he had spent his life “separating the right from the kooks.” He failed — the kooks now run the right.

They’ve overwhelmed Republican politics everywhere, from New Hampshire, where a conservative talk-show host won the congressional primary, to Nevada, where the GOP’s control of the State Senate depends upon the re-election of two freshmen who voted in favor of the death penalty for minors and for arming schoolteachers.

“What used to be the Southern Republican agenda is now the national Republican agenda,” says Lincoln Chafee, former Republican senator from Rhode Island — who became an independent after losing his bid for re-election in 2006, in large part due to a primary challenge from a hard-right conservative.

Thus, the hand-wringing and debate over the future of the GOP is likely moot. The direction of the party is no longer controllable, but is firmly in the hands of rabid ideologues, dead-certain that those who disagree with them are sure to destroy the American way of life. With stakes that high, and enemies so vile, they will bellow louder and louder — even as their numbers continue to shrink, which of course makes them more dangerous.

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Comments
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
The Press hardly lives up to the Constitution it is allowed to run under. The job of the press is to vet the candidates. Why did no one expose the statements of Wendy Button, Obama's speech writer? Among all the things she said this is the most striking. " I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges. Before I cast my vote, I will correct my party affiliation and change it to No Party or Independent. Then, in the spirit of election 2008, I’ll get a manicure, pedicure, and my hair done. Might as well look pretty when I am unemployed in a city swimming with “D’s.”
By Dorthy on 10/31/2008 at 2:47:09
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
This is a comment to Severin in an ugly blog he created but he did no publish it, I mean he is gay and does not want to admit it therefore no balls for the B&B: You have lost it. You are getting crazy and looks like you are going to be taken to some hospital where can keep you quit.

I mean, yesterday this gay.. upps guy, was craying like a girl, but really like a little girl on the air. I am not sure how long 96.9 will have this idiot on the air and yesterday he was crying that the socialist party will take him out of the air, haha, he does not understand that the Socialist party is not going to be responsible, but his crap that talks every day. Please he calls himself political expert when he talks crap like anybody in high school with a microphone.

he claims that all his life has been in politics, another lie,  I mean he has been talking crap for 10 years, and 10 years ago he was saying he had 15 years experience, now last month he claimed 25 and yetserday all his life!! can you believe this turd?. He even think that because he talks crap that is a problem with Obama!, when the only reason he will be fired is because is an idiot talking crap 100% crap.

A black guy call him racist, haha, is this a joke, Severin with all his crap is a racist, for sure no black is racist, the hate they have is because other reason, no race, but this so-called political expert is what he says, and you... you believe that crap?, please...

He couldn't handle syndication radio and now that he is getting $ 400,000 salary talking crap and he know he has lost it, the expert is afraid of losing his job and his half-million mansion in Cape Ann and he comfortable job working and talking crap from  his kitchen.

He can't even hide his gayness, he is a fraud.

When I heard 2 idiots were trying to kill Obama, I thought Severin and Graham then I heard to white extremist were caught, then I thought no doubt these 2 idiots are the ones. Then when I heard  dumb-asses I thought 100% sure they are the ones. And I turned on the radio next afternoon and I heard the idiot still there talking crap.... thought where is the divine justice?

Please 96.9 do something with this idiot severin, listen to all the crap, he can't even predict a simple session in the senate or something at all, he claims himself an expert in politics, he can't predict anything, he always believe, but always happens the opposite, always. His only job in politics was to help the other loser Pat Buchannan, HE LOST!!. so good job this loser made that the other loser could not even reach the presidential race. Please 96.9 do something, I do not care if you bring  other comedian like Graham, but I think Severin is done, he reached the top and bottom and that's it.

2 years ago he said that this election would be his last crapy talk we are about to finish it then what about this turd? is he going to retire and say that the socialist party took his job? please what a loser you are Severin, get your dog and your gayish birds that everybody can listen in the background and take a walk to hell.
By sebastienp_2000 on 11/01/2008 at 4:12:14
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
A comment I left to the ugly blog Severin created, but he did not publish it:
  You have lost it. You are getting crazy and looks like you are going to be taken to some hospital where can keep you quit.

I mean, yesterday this gay.. upps guy, was craying like a girl, but really like a little girl on the air. I am not sure how long 96.9 will have this idiot on the air and yesterday he was crying that the socialist party will take him out of the air, haha, he does not understand that the Socialist party is not going to be responsible, but his crap that talks every day. Please he calls himself political expert when he talks crap like anybody in high school with a microphone.

he claims that all his life has been in politics, another lie,  I mean he has been talking crap for 10 years, and 10 years ago he was saying he had 15 years experience, now last month he claimed 25 and yetserday all his life!! can you believe this turd?. He even think that because he talks crap that is a problem with Obama!, when the only reason he will be fired is because is an idiot talking crap 100% crap.

A black guy call him racist, haha, is this a joke, Severin with all his crap is a racist, for sure no black is racist, the hate they have is because other reason, no race, but this so-called political expert is what he says, and you... you believe that crap?, please...

He couldn't handle syndication radio and now that he is getting $ 400,000 salary talking crap and he know he has lost it, the expert is afraid of losing his job and his half-million mansion in Cape Ann and he comfortable job working and talking crap from  his kitchen.

He can't even hide his gayness, he is a fraud.

When I heard 2 idiots were trying to kill Obama, I thought Severin and Graham then I heard to white extremist were caught, then I thought no doubt these 2 idiots are the ones. Then when I heard  dumb-asses I thought 100% sure they are the ones. And I turned on the radio next afternoon and I heard the idiot still there talking crap.... thought where is the divine justice?

Please 96.9 do something with this idiot severin, listen to all the crap, he can't even predict a simple session in the senate or something at all, he claims himself an expert in politics, he can't predict anything, he always believe, but always happens the opposite, always. His only job in politics was to help the other loser Pat Buchannan, HE LOST!!. so good job this loser made that the other loser could not even reach the presidential race. Please 96.9 do something, I do not care if you bring  other comedian like Graham, but I think Severin is done, he reached the top and bottom and that's it.

2 years ago he said that this election would be his last crapy talk we are about to finish it then what about this turd? is he going to retire and say that the socialist party took his job? please what a loser you are Severin, get your dog and your gayish birds that everybody can listen in the background and take a walk to hell.
By sebastienp_2000 on 11/01/2008 at 4:13:14
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
I am intrigued by the astute logic.  A piece whose readers are so blatatley intelligent, and form these great crowds at Obama rallies, really offer something to intellectual exercise. "I mean, yesterday this gay.. upps guy," " for sure no black is racist,"  and the closer, "please what a loser you are Severin, get your dog and your gayish birds that everybody can listen in the background and take a walk to hell," really shows how the conservatives have gone off the deep end with their ill-gotten logic and convictions."They are not thoughtful people interested in influencing policy debates; these terrifyingly ignorant hard-liners hold a know-nothing set of rigid beliefs..." Which is unlike the thousands promised change? Promised hope? Promised an answer? No politition or political beliefs can ever change human nature, which is unfortuantely inherent in all of us, and therefore any system or and politician will offer us the answer.  Maybe you (reader and author alike) need to realize that "such serious times require something more than inane rhetoric." And maybe realize that Jay Severin isn't the problem. But with "the kooks now [running] the right," maybe look at the the more moderate of the two major party candidates.  Sorry, didn't mean to be so thoughtless.   
By sstangle on 11/01/2008 at 8:22:00
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
No politition or political beliefs can ever change human nature, which is unfortuantely inherent in all of us, and therefore no system or politician will ever be able to offer us the answer.  My apologies on the overlooked thoughtlessness  
By sstangle on 11/01/2008 at 8:24:56
Re: Rise of the political bogeyman
No politition or political beliefs can ever change human nature, which is unfortuantely inherent in all of us, and therefore no system or politician will ever be able to offer us the answer.  My apologies on the thoughtlessness once again. 
By sstangle on 11/01/2008 at 8:26:51

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