Joe Conason suggests right-wingers are mad at the president for beating them at their chest-thumping game

"This is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history."

-- GOP doodyhead Ed Gillespie

by Ken

I know the country has decided that it's A-OK that every word out of the mouth of every right-winger is frothy, thuggish lie. By that standard, of course, the Right-eous rage prompted by the Obama campaign's suggestion that Willard Inc. wouldn't have taken out Osama bin-Laden, is perfectly justified. Who's better equipped to manage the triple feat of lying about what the president and the would-be president, and the former president said about Osama bin-Laden? Not to mention erasing their heroes' unbroken history of screaming jingoism -- most notably in the record of America's forgotten-but-not-gone ex-hero, Chimpy the Accomplished-Mission.

I like Joe Conason's take in his syndicated column "Why Obama's bin Laden Ad Drives Republicans Crazy":

Nothing aggravates Republicans like seeing nasty, effective tactics upon which they have so long relied being turned against one of their candidates. So when Barack Obama's re-election campaign aired an ad celebrating the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death -- and suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have achieved that objective -- the right exploded with outraged protests.

Evidently, the feelings of longtime hatchet men like Bush-era party chair Ed Gillespie, ex-Bush flack Ari Fleischer and the editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal, to name a few, were really, really hurt — because the Obama campaign exploited a moment of national unity for partisan advantage.

Then Joe uncorks the Ed Gillespie corker I've put at the top of this post. Yup, it's Barack the Kenyan Milquetoast Moderate who's caused all that divisiveness, not thug-brained right-wingers.

During the Bush presidency," Joe recalls, "Republicans used precisely the same approach and worse, over and over, without fretting whether their words and ads were 'divisive.' "

It began weeks after the 9/11 attacks, amid sincere pledges of patriotic cooperation from congressional Democrats, when Karl Rove told the Republican National Committee that their party would "go to the country on this issue" to win the midterm elections in 2002. They won a historic victory by sliming wounded Vietnam hero Max Cleland and former Air Force intelligence officer Tom Daschle as stooges of al-Qaida.

Bush's 2004 re-election campaign amplified the same themes, with advertising and pageantry at the Republican convention in New York City grossly exploiting 9/11, a series of conveniently timed terror "alerts" leading up to Election Day and repeated warnings by Vice President Dick Cheney that a Democratic victory would signal weakness to America's enemies.

And it persisted into the 2006 midterm, with Rove falsely portraying Democrats as limp-wristed "liberals" trying to "understand" Osama bin Laden.

Until that election, the rough Rovian style succeeded brilliantly -- despite the fact that Bush and Cheney had actually allowed bin Laden and Mullah Omar to escape at Tora Bora.

"By contrast," Joe says, "the Obama ad's brief rebuke of Romney is at least factual and accurate."

Not only did he say what the ad quotes, but he also said that he wouldn't go into Pakistan to get bin Laden, which is what the mission required. Had the president followed Romney's policy recommendation, bin Laden would almost certainly still be at large.

Joe gets off a parting shot at Willard the Gutless War Wimp:

"Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," scoffed Romney in response. But he shouldn't be so quick to denigrate the former Democratic president, who entered the Navy during World War II and then served as a submarine officer until his honorable discharge in 1953. Somebody may compare Carter's service with Romney's own military record, which doesn't exist -- and remind voters that he avoided the Vietnam draft with a pampered stint as a Mormon missionary, in France.

Not to mention Willard's hulking brood of Junior War Wimps.

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I'll say it again: I think most of the former Bush "faithful" have forgotten even the bum's name. Meanwhile, what IS going on in Blair House?

SEE UPDATE BELOW


by Ken

A listserv colleague had just stressed the need to keep hammering home the disaster of the eight-year Bush spending binge -- to force it on the awareness of people, "many of whom want to forget Bush." Since Bush amnesia is kind of a hobby horse of mine (I've written about it here a number of times already), I chimed in:

I don't think enough note has been taken of this phenomenon of Bush-forgetting, the -- to me, anyway -- totally unexpected successor to "Bush-basher"-bashing.

I think for most of the former Bush faithful this is already a done deal. It's like they don't even recognize the NAME. George WHO? Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. At a guess the long, energy-sapping election season provided cover for this amazing disappearing act. Remember how what's-his-name seemed to disappear completely from the GOP nomination battle? (From the Dem one too for the most part, come to think of it.) At the time it seemed like just politics. I think the guy was already making his Great Escape from public consciousness, not to mention accountability.

I used to wonder if it would ever be possible for Bush supporters, both professional and electoral (you know, like the people who voted for the guy twice), including those swell folks who used to scream in outrage at the slightest whisper of what to them was "Bush-bashing," to face up to the reality of who and what their hero was. While some of them have indeed turned on him by claiming that he wasn't a "real conservative," by and large -- and I never saw this one coming! -- the strategy seems to have been to FORGET THAT THERE EVER WAS SUCH A PERSON. Yes, even while the bum is still in the White House and, you know, the one and only president of these United States!

Already the years 2001-08 have metamorphosed into a hazy time when the Democrats were plotting with Fannie and Freddie, taking cash and gifts from them while getting them to make all those bad loans to "those people" who shoulda never got 'em, with the goal of causing Wall Street to explode. During that same time, of course, the ultra-liberal, Islamofascist-loving Dems were also at work failing to support Our Brave Troops and doing everything they could to prevent OBT from achieving the glorious victory General Petraeus eventually won -- over the godless Democrats, I believe.


RACHEL MADDOW WANTS TO KNOW: WHAT
THE HECK IS GOING ON IN BLAIR HOUSE NOW?

Chimpy the Prez may have all but disappeared, but that hasn't stopped him from worsening the economic mess and the Israeli-Palestinian mess. And you'll recall that the White House vetoed the Obama request to move into Blair House on January 5, when the Obama girls were scheduled to begin school, rather than the 15th (the customary date for incoming presidents) -- on the ground that the mammoth building was "booked."

"Booked?" Rachel Maddow asked incredulously last night on her MSBNC show. All 119 rooms and 70,000 square feet, booked? As we all know, the Obama family has now made the move to Washington -- into a hotel. The White House Office of Protocol refused to provide the Maddow people with an agenda for Blair House, but the First Lady's spokesperson did graciously point out that they had "graciously" invited the Obamas to move in on the 15th! "Yes," Rachel noted, "they actually used the word 'graciously.'"

This has all served to make Rachel that much more curious to know what exactly is going on in Blair House which made it impossible to accommodate the president-elect's family.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If you're a D.C. insider type and have an invitation to an event taking place in Blair House during this 10-day period, Rachel is begging you to e-mail it to her -- just so she can find out what's going on there. (She's also got a Twitter query out to this effect.)

Note that the clip, last night's "Ms. Information" segment, also includes hilarious coverage of Grover Norquist's grand summit of the hopefuls for the Republic National Committee chairmanship, which we've been covering avidly.


TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE -- WE HAVE OUR ANSWER!

Rachel, it turns out, was flooded with e-mails, but there's only one piece of information about plans for Blair House between th 5th and 15th of January: On the 13th, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard is scheduled to stay over!

Even apart from the question of whether there really isn't enough space among those 119 rooms (and 35 bathrooms!) for the four Obamas as well as Mr. Howard that night, or whether it really wasn't possible to put him up somewhere else (where the security costs would certainly have been the tiniest fraction of what it's costing to secure the president-elect's family at the Hay-Adams Hotel (Blair House, of course, comes equipped with security), it turns out that the former prime minister's visit is a red herring, that in fact he was booked after the Obama request to take up residence on the 5th was turned down, presumably so there would be at least the one booking.

Bloomberg News's Margaret Carlson reported exclusively tonight that in fact the Bush turndown was wholly unrelated to occupancy of Blair House. The Bushes just didn't wanna, end of story. And apparently the useless scumbags didn't give a flying fig either about the inconvenience to the Obamas or the cost to U.S. taxpayers.

In other words, the shithead was saying just what he's said with every breath he's drawn since he was installed in the White House:

"Fuck you, America! Eat shit!"

Class all the way. Every cell in his worthless carcass is toxic waste, always has been, and you'd have to be pretty much brain-dead not to have noticed it.

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