In the years that followed, the anti-Clinton hysteria would have other consequences. On April 19, 1995, right-wing militia fanatic Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb at the Oklahoma City federal building killing 168 people. Limbaugh and others who had stoked the fires of paranoia would angrily deny any suggestion that they had contributed to the catastrophe.
Despite Clinton's reelection in 1996, the Republicans did not give up their determination to destroy him. In 1998-99, they instituted impeachment proceedings that sought to oust him from office for lying about his extramarital sex life. Though Clinton survived a Senate trial, he and his family were humiliated and Republicans were energized to restore the Reagan-Bush dynasty by putting George W. Bush into the White House.
The same two elements tearing down a Democratic president and creating a sense of political havoc are again at the center of Republican strategy, except that today the GOP is even better placed to carry out a repeat than the party was in 1994. Then, there was no Fox News dominating the cable TV ratings and the right-wing media was far less developed than it is today.
Though the Republicans can't say that Obama wasn't legitimately elected (he won with 53 percent of the vote and a record 66.8 million ballots), the Right has questioned his legitimacy in other ways, such as the spurious claims that he was born in Kenya despite his Hawaiian birth certificate.
The Tea Party crowd also has decried him as some Islamic-terrorist-loving, America-hating communist, socialist or Nazi if not the anti-Christ. A popular Tea Party poster shows Obama as a white-faced Joker, the sociopathic character from the latest Batman movie.
With funding from corporate and other right-wing interests, the Tea Partiers also have done their best to create political chaos.
Last summer, Tea Party activists disrupted "town hall" meetings on health care, and this spring, they forced Democratic members of Congress to run a gauntlet of insults and other abuse as they walked to the Capitol to vote on health-care reform scenes reminiscent of white racists shouting at black students at Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
High-Level Encouragement
The organized chaos even entered the Congress itself, as Republican lawmakers cheered protesters on and at times acted like them.
Last year, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, shouted "you lie" at Obama during a presidential address. During the health-care vote, Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, yelled "baby killer" while Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, was speaking against a Republican motion to stop the bill by requiring revised anti-abortion language.
Republican leaders also engaged in apocalyptic rhetoric, with House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio declaring that passage of health-care reform would lead to "Armageddon," a religious reference to the end-times battle between a warrior Jesus and the anti-Christ.
In the days after the health-care vote, the disruptions did spill over into violence, with bricks thrown through the windows of Democratic offices and death threats made against members of Congress. Some militant Tea Partiers vowed to stage an armed rally near Washington.
Though Boehner and a few other Republican leaders finally criticized acts of violence, others continued to wink at the unruly behavior or shift the blame onto the Democrats for talking about it.
"It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, criticizing Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine for "dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon."
For her part, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin defended her advice that her backers should "reload" and her decision to put crosshairs on the districts of endangered Democrats, saying the references had nothing to do with violence. She blamed the controversy on "this BS coming from the lame-stream media, lately, about us inciting violence."
Amid these mixed messages, right-wing extremists now appear to be shifting from aggressive words and disruptive protests to going operational.
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