# Tom DeLay calls Obama a "Marxist" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 10, 2008, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029 "2008-01-10T21:30:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/21 "2008-01-11T02:29:28Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Well, Godzilla is a lizard. It’s all about bracketing the target. You establish that he’s an asshole, and now we can start discussion on what _kind_ of asshole he is. [/QUOTE] With DeLay, the question is, “What kind of an asshole _isn’t_ he?” He pretty much runs the asshole gamut. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/22 "2008-01-11T02:36:36Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] With DeLay, the question is, “What kind of an asshole _isn’t_ he?” He pretty much runs the asshole gamut. [/QUOTE] First person to post a goatse link gets slapped! ---
**Author:** ![JonScribe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3be4f8/32.png) [@JonScribe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JonScribe)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/23 "2008-01-11T03:19:17Z")
DeLay’s an asshole, but he’s not a very smart one, as everyone knows. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/24 "2008-01-11T03:28:00Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] Correct. Fortunately, that means this dumb accusation will only be listened to by people who are prone to believing this crap and wouldn’t have voted for Obama anyway. They say this stuff about Clinton, too. I wish they would tell me where their secret crystal ball is, because some of them acknowledge “knowing” she’s a socialist even though she has never actually said or done anything that qualifies as socialist. [/QUOTE] Well, that’s a slightly different kettle. The OP’s report is of someone being accused of “secretly” being Marxist. If you simply call someone socialist, it’s a less murky accusation; presumably you’re basing on the same positions and actions that everyone else can see, and everyone has the ability to judge for themselves how accurate the charge is. Senator Clinton _has_ done some things and proposed others that might fairly be called socialistic. Her American Health Choices Plan will cover every American - 47 million currently uninsured people. That’s certainly fair to characterize as socialistic. Whether that makes her a socialist is for the reader to decide. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/25 "2008-01-11T03:38:44Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Well, that’s a slightly different kettle. The OP’s report is of someone being accused of “secretly” being Marxist. If you simply call someone socialist, it’s a less murky accusation; presumably you’re basing on the same positions and actions that everyone else can see, and everyone has the ability to judge for themselves how accurate the charge is. [/quote] So you would think, but it ain’t necessarily so. > [@](#): > > Senator Clinton _has_ done some things and proposed others that might fairly be called socialistic. Her American Health Choices Plan will cover every American - 47 million currently uninsured people. That’s certainly fair to characterize as socialistic. Whether that makes her a socialist is for the reader to decide. I don’t really want to regurgitate somebody else’s idiocy, but as you say there’s quite a gap between “socialistic” and “socialist.” And I’m not talking about people saying her health care plan has socialistic elements, which it does, like many other government programs. I’m talking about somebody who said she was a socalist who was going to take over the media and throw her opponents in jail if elected. She hadn’t done anything to indicate she was going to do that, because she was hiding her true nature until she gets elected, but apparently it’s just obvious that she’ll do those things. She did have Vince Foster bumped off, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Frostillicus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Frostillicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frostillicus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/26 "2008-01-11T03:50:01Z")
I hear now that Obama’s actual name is Barack Muhammad Hussein Obama, at least acording to some right-wing nut cases. I guess the Hussein middle name by itself wasn’t enough to whip the sheep into a frenzy. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/27 "2008-01-11T03:53:53Z")
[http://leftword.blogdig.net/archives/articles/January2008/09/Conservative\_\_radio\_host\_Cunningham\_falsely\_referred\_to\_\_Barack\_Mohammed\_Hussein\_Obama\_\_\_\_advanced\_madrassa\_falsehood.html](http://leftword.blogdig.net/archives/articles/January2008/09/Conservative __radio_host_Cunningham_falsely_referred_to__ Barack_Mohammed_Hussein_Obama ____ advanced_madrassa_falsehood.html) Some 'tard named Bill Cunningham, “B” list talk radio bottom feeder ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/28 "2008-01-11T04:02:48Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Senator Clinton _has_ done some things and proposed others that might fairly be called socialistic. Her American Health Choices Plan will cover every American - 47 million currently uninsured people. That’s certainly fair to characterize as socialistic. [/QUOTE] No, sir. Just because socialists would enthusiastically endorse it (so far as it goes, art of the possible and all that) does not make it a socialistic program. If it maintains any role for the health insurance companies, if it even allows for their survival, it arguably is not. As Michael Moore pointed out prior to the Iowa Caucus, [Edwards is the only front-runner who wholeheartedly endorses a single-payer system](http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2008-01-02) (and even **that** is not terribly socialistic compared with, say, Britain’s National Health system, and Britain is by no means a socialist country). > [@](#): > > It’s hard to get past the hair, isn’t it? But once you do – and recently I have chosen to try – you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many. A candidate who says things like this: “I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy.” Whoa. We haven’t heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. He won’t take the big checks from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly funded. He has said, point-blank, that he’s going after the drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their monopolistic power, too. This is Roosevelt/Truman kind of talk. That’s why it’s resonating with people in Iowa, even though he doesn’t get the attention Obama and Hillary get – and that lack of coverage may cost him the first place spot tomorrow night. After all, he is one of those white guys who’s been running things for far too long. > > \ > > Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His plan doesn’t go as fast as I would like, but he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that **the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.** Obama and HRC are actually rather vanilla-bourgeois by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/29 "2008-01-11T04:10:52Z")
> [@](#): > > “He’s a Marxist but a very smart one — he doesn’t let anyone know it” That’s just silly. Everyone knows that the secret Marxists are infiltrating the Republican party. The Democratic party is full of secret Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/30 "2008-01-11T04:23:03Z")
[QUOTE=Frostillicus] I hear now that Obama’s actual name is Barack Muhammad Hussein Obama, at least acording to some right-wing nut cases. I guess the Hussein middle name by itself wasn’t enough to whip the sheep into a frenzy. [/QUOTE] Frenzied sheep? What a weird image. I don’t think I’m going to sleep well tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/31 "2008-01-11T04:31:49Z")
I say we sent DeLay a copy of [John Birch Society Blues.](http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/birch.html) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/32 "2008-01-11T04:33:27Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Senator Clinton _has_ done some things and proposed others that might fairly be called socialistic. Her American Health Choices Plan will cover every American - 47 million currently uninsured people. That’s certainly fair to characterize as socialistic. Whether that makes her a socialist is for the reader to decide. [/QUOTE] So, is Medicare socialistic in your book? And Mitt must be a Marxist also, considering what he signed into law in Massachusetts. Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/33 "2008-01-11T04:45:30Z")
[QUOTE=Dumbguy] Tom Delay fucks dogs. I’ve seen the pictures. [/QUOTE] So . . . there’s no use trying to sell you any? ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/34 "2008-01-11T18:15:17Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] So, is Medicare socialistic in your book? And Mitt must be a Marxist also, considering what he signed into law in Massachusetts. Who knew? [/QUOTE] Sure, Medicare is socialistic, in that it tends towards a [system in which](http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587) assets are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. Your second sentence makes two leaps. It switches from socialism to Marxism, and it switches from a program which has elements of the philosophy to the proponent of that program wholly adopting that philosophy. In other words, the distinction I was careful to maintain in previous posts, you have either ignored, misunderstood, or deliberately shat upon. Mitt Rommeny may well have signed a program into law that had socialist elements to it, or could be fairly characterized as socialistic, without being a socialist, just as Hilary Clinton can support programs that have socialist elements or could be fairly characterized as socialistic without herself being a socialist. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/35 "2008-01-11T19:33:21Z")
[QUOTE=JonScribe] DeLay’s an asshole, but he’s not a very smart one, as everyone knows. [/QUOTE] I have to disagree with the second half of that sentence. In his efforts to secure a permanent majority for the Republicans, DeLay managed to dance on the fine line between legal and illegal activity for an awful long time before he stepped over and got caught. It takes some smarts to do that. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/36 "2008-01-11T20:39:05Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Sure, Medicare is socialistic, in that it tends towards a [system in which](http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587) assets are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. Your second sentence makes two leaps. It switches from socialism to Marxism, and it switches from a program which has elements of the philosophy to the proponent of that program wholly adopting that philosophy. In other words, the distinction I was careful to maintain in previous posts, you have either ignored, misunderstood, or deliberately shat upon. Mitt Rommeny may well have signed a program into law that had socialist elements to it, or could be fairly characterized as socialistic, without being a socialist, just as Hilary Clinton can support programs that have socialist elements or could be fairly characterized as socialistic without herself being a socialist. [/QUOTE] You wrote > [@Bricker](#): > > Senator Clinton has done some things and proposed others that might fairly be called socialistic. Her American Health Choices Plan will cover every American - 47 million currently uninsured people. That’s certainly fair to characterize as socialistic. Whether that makes her a socialist is for the reader to decide. if you are saying that anyone advocating anything that you would call socialistic (which seems to be anything less than a totally free market) might be called a socialist - depending on the reader, you would need to apply the same insinuation you applied to Clinton to Mitt, Obama, and close to the entire US congress. (Ron Paul might be pure.) My comment associating Mitt with Marxism is hyperbole, of course. I was twitting DeLay. I know you disagree with his statement, but he is in your party. But your comment on Hillary (who I don’t support) sounds a lot like the comments I heard in my youth - Sen. X supports some of the same things the Russkies do. If he is a Commie is up for the reader to decide. Only a particularly brain dead reader could conclude that she is a socialist based on any evidence I know of. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/37 "2008-01-11T21:18:46Z")
I would just like to make it clear for any future discussions that when I use the term “socialism”, I mean “government ownership of the means of production”. I see the term being bandied about for things like medicare, when that is actually a form of wealth redistribution. Socialists may or may not redistribute wealth. The Ba’ath Party, for example, was socialist in Iraq. But Saddam kept for himself the vast majority of wealth from production. Very little was redistributed. Philosophically, socialism is based on the principle of denying the validity of property rights. Wealth redistribution is based on the principle of recognizing the validity of coercion in the pursuit of egalitarianism. ---
**Author:** ![11811](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/9d8465/32.png) [@11811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/11811)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/38 "2008-01-11T22:48:56Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Well, that’s a slightly different kettle. [/QUOTE] Tom DeLay is a kettle of ass. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2008, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/39 "2008-01-12T00:05:21Z")
I can’t believe anyone cares enough what he thinks enough to pit him for it. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2008, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029/40 "2008-01-12T00:17:02Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Sure, Medicare is socialistic, in that it tends towards a [system in which](http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587) assets are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. [/QUOTE] Isn’t ANY government spending “socialistic” under that definition? All spending by a democratically elected body funded by taxation of any form takes assets from individual determination and spends them though a form of social control. It becomes a meaningless definition, doesn’t it? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-delay-calls-obama-a-marxist/433029.md?page=3)