There is more than Obama's legacy at stake here. The intended audience of all the GOP tactics this summer was the apathetic red stater who typically lives a life of quiet despair. The GOP by appealing to their baser desires of fear and hatred, have transformed these lost souls who aren't so quiet anymore. If the GOP doesn't control the unruly mobs that their tactics created, who can predict what violence might occur?

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The GOP appeals to the baser emotions of fear and hatred. The intended audience for their tactics is the under-educated, low income red stater whose existence is bereft of hope. Liberals appeal to the intellect of the higher educated and higher income populace. The progressives can't believe that all of the anti-Obama tactics are really working, but the Democrats only have to look at history and they'll see the GOP using the same tactics repetitively--maintaining their base and attracting some independent stragglers.

Red staters watch WWF wrestling because it appeals to their desire to have simple minded entertainment that provides a cathartic release to the anxieties of their daily lives.

Dealing with the hard political facts is the article â??Biden on 2010: If GOP Succeeds, It's â??The End of the Road for What Barack and I Are Trying to Do'â? at

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/biden-on-2010-if-gop-succeeds-its-the-end-of-the-road-for-what-barack-and-i-are-trying-to-do-1.html

which states â??Vice President Joe Biden said today that if Democrats were to lose 35 House seats they currently hold in traditionally Republican districts, it would mean doomsday for President Obama's agenda. Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats.â?

The euphoria of the election has cleared. â??What didn't seem possible just a few months ago, appears to be the topic of conversation even within the upper echelons of the Obama White House,â? said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. â??It is interesting to hear Vice President Biden admit that the administration's effort to double down on a partisan agenda of government takeovers could possibly mean the â??end of the road' for their political viability.â?

We've had a summer full of virtually constant pictures of the GOP attacking Obama. The combative rhetoric has come at the town hall meetings, by GOP Congressional leaders during the most formal processes of our government and everywhere in between. It has come verbally but also visually with the insane image of GOP protestors showing up at meetings with weapons.

It is not just the cessation of Obama's dreams that are endangered. We could descend into violence against a President again.

The article â??The Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This a President Was Killedâ? at

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/23941/

discusses the parallels between now and when J.F.K. was assassinated, and concludes â??Today, conservatives are expressing outrage that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had the nerve to raise concerns about the onrush of violent political rhetoric." The Noise Machine claims it has no idea what Pelosi's talking about. But the truth is, America's most famous bouts of political violence (i.e. JFK, Oklahoma City, etc.) have always been accompanied by waves of radical, right-wing rhetoric.
Given that history, the GOP's insistence that the hate now filling the streets couldn't possibly inspire violence seems woefully naive.

Just because the GOP has from Nixon to the present day resorted to atrocious rhetoric does that mean that Democrats should respond in kind? Of course notâ??we'll lose as many votes from our baseâ??if not more, than we could conceivably gain from the GOP base. These tactics also can't be left unchallenged though.

The article â??Why Isn't There a Left-Wing Conspiracy?â? at

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/23937/

summarizes how in 1998 First Lady Hillary Clinton labeled GOP tactics as a "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the article states â??The conservative attack machine has three components. The first is political".
The GOP's daily messages are relentlessly negative and designed to evoke fear:
Everything you hold dear is about to be taken from you. While some Republican missives seem nonsensical -- Obama is not an American citizen -- their thematic unity plays on visceral conservative emotions: People who are not real Americans are ruining the US.�

The article deals with how strict message adherence by all members of the group amplifies the message for the apathetic, downtrodden masses as it continues â??The second component of the right-wing media strategy is sociological. The conservative attack machine broadcasts to those who did not vote for Obama in November - 46 percent of voters who are overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and conservative. The negative messages resonate because Republican voters operate in an information "silo," where their news is supplied by reactionary radio hosts, Fox News, and conservative Christian ministers.â?

Rove knows about hatred and appeals to it as the article concludes â??Finally, the right-wing attacks have a psychological component. George Lakoff's Moral Politics observed that conservatives and liberals have different
worldviews. The conservative view, the "Strict Father" model, is rule based:
"Children are taught to respect and obey their parents and the rules they espouse. Conservative messages are framed from a rules-based worldview that encourages absolutist, "concrete operational" thinking. Obama is not a legitimate President because he didn't follow the rules about citizenship.�

What must happen? The article concludes â??Liberals must wage their own perpetual political campaign and use it as a vehicle to counter the vicious right-wing attacks. There has to be a liberal message machine that on a daily basis battles for the hearts and minds of average Americans.â?

Another article â??The Mindless Class: The Left's Evil Twinâ? at

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/23961/

attacks the Right proclaiming it is â??deprived as it is of originality, creativity, and the ability to put a logical thought or a coherent sentence together, readily embrace marginally demented spokesmen who are given the power to reach millions by the corporate media, people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. These surrogates mirror the frustration and fear of the mindless class who get a fleeting sense of belonging and power as they channel their own destructive anger into a larger destructive force.
The Republican Party serves the interests of a tiny percent of Americans but gets around 50% of the vote in every election. The great majority of those who vote Republican are voting against their own welfare. If not for their intellectual emptiness, they'd likely be part of us.�

Who are these people? They are people who will attempt to blame their masters for their crimes, but as the article concludes â??Most of today's tea party participants are mini, mindless, Adolph Eichmanns. If their tactics, abetted by media collusion, successfully promote their negative agenda on health care, they will have accomplished the nearly impossible task of winning on a position that makes them losers.
The Nuremburg war crimes tribunal, standing in for civil society, refused to accept the idea that people can escape responsibility for their actions by blaming the group. The court did not regard the refusal to think a viable
defense. Each criminal was punished alone. But his victims were still dead.�

The radical right isn't playing games. It has caused an elementary school's principal to receive a death threat over a song praising Obama. It has reached the point where the wimpiest of our society is getting attacked.

The article â??Fox News altered â??Obama praise' story to exclude â??death threats'â? at

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/fox-news-deleted-mention-of-death-threats-against-principal/

describes this situation and deals with how FOX censored the information to the GOP's advantage.

The GOP, as Limbaugh stated â??wants Obama to failâ?. That means all of his policies--including improving health care, they would do anything to prevent from succeeding. We've seen all of the anti-Obama rhetoric and we've seen people going to town hall meetings with concealed and unconcealed weapons. Let's face it. The GOP hate mongering has riled up their apathetic base to a fevered pitch. This is a dangerous time.

That is past any conception of decency, yet the leaders of the GOP aren't calling the attacks off. If violence erupts then the GOP will have done much more than gain a few seats in an election or destroy Obama's administration. They will have reduced our country to a shambles. What does that say about the GOP leaders and their robotic followers?

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"?it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.