(Too weak for a Pit rant…but no real Debate. I throw myself on the mercy of the mods.)
Presuming (knock wood, turn around 3 times and spit) that we’re heading into 4 years of Democratic hegemony, the right wing will have to go into Loyal Opposition mode. I’m not concerned about actual Republican leadership; they’ll be fine. I’m thinking about Talk Radio, and conservative blogs, and anonymous e-mail campaigns…the kind of people who, during the Clinton administration, gave us the “Who murdered Vincent Foster?” crap.
Having Obama as president could raise this to a whole 'nother level. What can we expect to hear?
I’ll throw out a few for starters:
Changing the national motto to “In Allah We Trust”
The “War on Christmas” meme goes wild.
Funneling government funds to ACORN
A flood of illegal aliens from Africa, all Obama’s relatives
I’ll bet you here and now $1,000 in cash that the Democrats will, sometime in the next 4 years, try to pass some sort of comprehensive gun legislation effecting an entire classification of weapons.
That’s not nuttery, that’s a certainty. In fact, it is so much a certainty that two of the last three Democratic Presidents passed comprehensive gun bans (Johnson and Clinton, only Carter failed to). In that time not a single Republican has done so, unless you count the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, which strictly speaking wasn’t a ban at all.
What about the Brady Bill? (honestly, I’m not sure what it does, but I know it passed under Reagan)
No, I won’t take that bet. But “they’re coming to take your guns” is wingnuttery. “They’re coming to take your assault rifles and restrict gun show sales”…that’s just a policy discussion.
I’m pretty sure a gun ban in this context means…a ban on all guns. Hence it being nutty.
I think we’ve heard most of the more nutty attacks on Obama already. He’s a communist/muslim/terrorist/black-militant who hates plumbers. People in right-wing blogs seem pretty married to these ideas, so I think they’ll continue to hit on them for at least the first year or two.
Back in the 90s we were told that there wouldn’t be any big push for same-sex marriage, and now we’re being told anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is some kind of homophobic monster. Ted Kennedy promised us that the 1965 immigration reform bill wouldn’t change America’s racial and ethnic demographics. Perhaps you’ll understand why I’m a mite skeptical of the promise that the left isn’t going for a complete ban on all private gun ownership.
Oh, don’t worry. When they bring back the Fairness Doctrine and institute hate speech laws like Europe and Canada, you won’t have to worry about anyone saying anything in public that you don’t like.
Throughout a lot of Bush’s presidency we heard ‘why don’t you support the president in wartime’ and all sorts of other ‘if you don’t agree with the president 100% of the time you’re against us’ type bullshit. Anyone wanna bet money that Obama will not be receiving the unquestioning support of the right wing during wartime?
“We had [terrorist guy/group] in our sights, but Obama refused to give the order to finish him/them off.”
“Obama ordered [terrorist suspect] released from secret detention and flown to a terrorist state.”
“This one high school somewhere is offering a comparative religion class, in which students will read excerpts from several religious texts, including the Koran. Obama is persecuting Christians.”
