The Right and Obama

A textbook example of how the US right views President Obama was on show yesterday. It came after the murder of US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others in Libya on Tuesday after trouble over a film called ‘The Innocence of Muslims’.

The US embassy in Cairo, Egypt, stated that it “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

President Obama gave a typical US presidential response to the attack, saying that those murdered “exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice…and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.”

Meanwhile Republican candidate Mitt Romney seized upon the earlier statement from Cairo and used it as a criticism of Obama.

He said: “I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi.

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"It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attack.”

This fits in with the right wing conspiracy of Obama. That he is a bit of a softie when it comes to those barbaric Muslims. He may well even be a secret Muslim himself, profaning the White House with his wicked, heathen ways.

The Republican Party could make significant capital out of Obama’s first term. His expansion of the ‘war on terror’ (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is a good place to go for material on this). His refusal to prosecute any members of the criminal Bush administration and his further sacrifice of civil liberties under the NDAA act (though for the time being part of that bill has been stopped).

Luckily for Obama the Republican Party cares not a jot about these things (aside from Ron Paul and a few others). What they really care about is creating a socialist paradise for the super-rich and creating demons in order to further increase the largest military budget in the world even more. So they created the fake Obama to score points off.

The right’s incorrect hostility to Obama is encapsulated by the film 2016 by Dinesh D’Souza. A man who worked in the Reagan White House and, later became a fellow of the Hoover Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, two notorious neo-conservative think tanks.

I have unfortunately not seen this film, but judging by the reviews read; it has the usual right wing talking points on Obama, not based on much factual evidence.

US politics is currently in a disturbing phase. The President oversees a kill list, authorises drone strikes and signs acts like the NDAA. The Republicans meanwhile try to paint the picture of him being a sinister, far left Islamic sympathizer who is bringing down the US from within. It is to quote the late Alexander Cockburn’s posthumous book title, ‘a colossal wreck’.

The Right and Obama

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