In both cases, the Democrats inherited recessions and huge budget deficits from Republican presidents named Bush. In both cases, congressional Republicans rallied against the economic package of the new President hoping to strangle the young Democratic administrations in their cradles.
And, as congressional Republicans worked on a more overt political level, their media allies and other operatives were getting busy at subterranean depths, reviving attack lines from the campaigns to sow doubts about the two Democratic presidents – and trying to whip up the right-wing base into a near revolutionary fervor.
So far at least, the Republicans are experiencing less success against Barack Obama than they did against Bill Clinton. According to opinion polls, Obama remains widely popular with an American public that favors his more activist agenda for reviving the American economy and confronting systemic problems like energy, health care and education.
Though Republicans scored points inside the Beltway with their opposition to Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill – and their complaints that Obama "failed" in his bipartisan outreach to them – the GOP tactics appear to have backfired with the American people.
Gauging public opinion one month into Obama’s presidency, polls found that most Americans faulted the Republicans for rebuffing Obama’s gestures of bipartisanship, and a New York Times/CBS News poll discovered that a majority said Obama “should pursue the priorities he campaigned on … rather than seek middle ground with Republicans.” [NYT, Feb. 24, 2009]
But the Republicans seem incapable of coming up with any other strategy than to seek Obama’s destruction, much as they torpedoed Clinton. The three moderate Republican senators who supported the stimulus package – Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter – were widely denounced by the right-wing media as “traitors.”
Indeed, the Republican Party arguably has become captive to the angry right-wing media that the GOP conservatives did so much to help create in the late 1970s, after the Vietnam War defeat and Richard Nixon’s Watergate debacle.
This Right-Wing Machine proved useful in protecting Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal; undermining Clinton in the 1990s; dirtying up Al Gore in 2000; and wrapping George W. Bush in the protective garb of a full-scale cult of personality after 9/11.
But the machine wore down in its defense of Bush’s multitude of disasters and ultimately could not generate enough suspicions about Obama to elect John McCain. Still, it remains a potent force in the country and particularly among the Republican “base.”
It is also a machine that can run only on the high-octane fuel of anger and hate. If it tried to down-shift to a more responsible approach to politics, it would stall out, losing its core audience of angry white men who feel deeply aggrieved by their loss of status.
In turn, Republican leaders can’t disown the right-wing media infrastructure that has advanced their interests for so long. In the first month of Obama’s presidency, the congressional Republicans fell in line behind Rush Limbaugh’s openly declared desire for Obama to fail.
Now, the Republicans may see little choice but to bet on the ability of their Right-Wing Machine to continue spreading doubts and hysteria about Obama.
More books and DVDs can be expected soon, recycling the 2008 campaign’s rumor-mongering on Obama – that he wasn’t born in the United States, that he’s a secret Muslim, that he’s in league with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, etc.
Rumbling Insurrection
Much like the Clinton-era militia movement’s fear of “black helicopters,” there already are rumblings about the need for an armed uprising to thwart Obama’s alleged “communist” agenda.
Ironically, right-wingers who defended George W. Bush when he mounted a radical assault on the Constitution – seeking to establish an imperial presidency while eliminating habeas corpus and other key freedoms – are suddenly seeing threats to the Constitution from Obama.
Fox News, in particular, has been floating the idea of armed rebellion. On Feb. 20 – the one-month anniversary of Obama’s inauguration – Glenn Beck hosted a special program called “War Room” that “war-gamed” various scenarios including the overthrow of an oppressive U.S. government when “bubba” militias rise up and gain the support of the American military.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
