Right-wing rage and Democratic presidents

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/02/25/broun_helms_clinton

Right-wing rage and Democratic presidents
By Steve Kornacki


Let's be clear: The right hardly has a monopoly on intemperate rhetoric and the man who stood up at a Georgia town hall recently and asked, "Who's going to shoot Obama" probably doesn't actually want the president to be killed. (The Secret Service has concluded as much.)

But his comment to Rep. Paul Broun, perhaps the preeminent Tea Party voice in the House, and Broun's apparent reaction to it (no outrage, no condemnation, maybe laughter, and then a reply that explained why frustration with Obama is logical) is telling nonetheless, because it speaks to the intense resentment that seems to flourish on the right whenever a Democrat is in the White House.

As I've noted before, the behavior that has come to define conservative activism in the age of Obama -- reflexive opposition justified by overheated, irrational and hysterical claims about Obama's legitimacy and motives -- shouldn't have caught anyone off-guard. We saw this show before, when Bill Clinton was president and the right became obsessed with wild conspiracy theories (remember Vince Foster's suicide?) and convinced itself that the president and his wife were part of some countercultural, socialistic plot. And we saw it when Jimmy Carter was president (although the dynamics were a little different, since Carter spent most of his term at war with liberals in his own party) and we saw it when Lyndon Johnson was president. This is just what the right does when Democrats run Washington.

snip//

Of course, the right's attitude toward Clinton has changed dramatically these past few years. Not coincidentally, this reevaluation took hold at the same time that Obama emerged as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. Suddenly, expressing fondness for Bill and Hillary (and forgetting all about all of the nastiness of 1993 and 1994) served a practical political purpose for the right, helping them to portray Obama as a dangerous, extreme-even-by-Democratic-standards outsider -- the same thing that they once claimed Clinton was.

In other words, maybe a decade or two from now, when some other Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office, don't be surprised if Paul Broun is out there longing for the good old days when a reasonable, pragmatic, impossible-to-dislike Democrat named Barack Obama was running the country.

[NWHarkness]

1. One quibble

Twenty years from now, no one is going to remember who Paul Broun was.

[GoCubsGo]

4. Two quibbles...

...the man who stood up at a Georgia town hall recently and asked, "Who's going to shoot Obama" probably doesn't actually want the president to be killed. (The Secret Service has concluded as much.)

Like hell he didn't. Broun's district butts up to the northern part of mine. I also went to school at UGA, which is in the county next door to where this assclown who asked the question lives. I know what the people are like around here. Hell, look at the shitbag they chose to represent them. I hear that kind of shit all the time. They said it about Clinton, too. He meant it, regardless of what the Secret Service concluded.

[OHdem10]

2. Nsever forget, the Right and their Rich Supporters (Richard M.

Scaife) started from Day One of Clinton Presidency.
Sent all kinds of "investigators to Arkansas to dig
up Dirt" and we were treated to some wild stories
from Day One. The Righties did not believe he was
a legitimate President.

Heck they did not accept FDR and did everything
they could to try to undermine him.

[GoCubsGo]

3. Sorry. I replied to the wrong comment. n/t