Jamie

Weinstein

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July 28, 2009

Conservatives Must Denounce Right-Wing Nuttery

The Obama Administration is on the ropes.

Republicans and conservatives opposed to a rapid increase in the size and scope of government should be heartened by the American public’s gradual turn away from Obamaism. But when we need Republican and conservative leadership the most, when we need our leaders and thinkers to clearly differentiate their vision for the country from Barack Obama’s vision, many of our leaders have failed us. Instead of taking the opportunity presented to proclaim the conservative vision to the American people, some Republican leaders have opted to latch on to wild conspiracy theories promoted by the fringes of the Republican Party. Or, at the very least, some of our leaders have allowed such wild theories to fester by not proactively combating and denouncing them.

Just last month, for instance, you had a guy like Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan Administration Defense Department official and purported conservative intellectual, actually write in The Washington Times that Barack Obama might very well be a secret Muslim. “(T)here is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” Gaffney wrote. Among Gaffney’s “mounting evidence” was the fact that President Obama referred to the Koran as the “holy Koran” during his June speech in Cairo, Egypt. It’s called pandering, Mr. Gaffney. It no more helps prove that President Obama is a secret Muslim than President Bush speaking in Spanish to a Latino audience proves he is a “secret Hispanic” or President Obama wearing a yarmulke at a gathering of American Jews (as he has) proves he is “secretly Jewish.”

I do not know how widespread such idiocy resonates among the fringes of the Republican Party, but a YouTube video put up last week of a town hall meeting held by Republican Congressman Mike Castle is worrisome. A lady pressed the Delaware Republican about why Obama has not produced his birth certificate and then loudly declared that Obama was in fact a citizen of Kenya, not the United States. “I want my country back,” she shouted in her rant at the befuddled congressman, who could only respond, responsibly, that President Obama was in fact an American citizen. It is unclear how many people in the audience agreed with the woman, but there were certainly enough of them to make some noise.

These “birthers,” as they have come to be known, allege that Obama is not eligible to be president because he was not born in the United States. Despite proof from the state of Hawaii that Barack Obama was actually born there, these nuts argue that he was actually born in Kenya. 

I suppose this could be possible. That is, if you believe that 48 years ago, a group of Islamists conspired to take over America by making Barack Obama president. Having the incredible foresight in the 1960s too see that a black man would be the obvious choice for president of the United States in 2008, their strategy would be to hide his foreign and Muslim identity by having his parents name him Barack Hussein Obama. Somehow, they knew this young child would be smart and talented enough to get into elite colleges and become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. The men behind this clever movement to take over America wisely encouraged a young Barack to take drugs in his youth and then to later write about his drug-taking days in a memoir because, presciently, they understood that writing about one’s drug-taking past is usually a successful presidential strategy.

That’s not all. Instead of having Obama be born in America, his mother’s native country, as most people trying to conduct a successful take over plot of America would do, they had Obama be born in Kenya. But in order to deceive the American people that Obama was an actual American citizen 47 years later, the men behind this plot made sure local Hawaiian newspapers published notices of Obama’s birth. The secret cabal behind Obama was also able to fool, evidently, the state of Hawaii.

Whether people who propagate the Barack Obama is a Muslim/non-American citizen theory realize it or not, this is basically what they are suggesting. It is clinical insanity.

One might go on and ask why someone who supposedly is a secret radical Islamist, determined to create a sharia state in America, would add troops to Afghanistan to fight radical Islamists there, launch predator drone attacks against Islamist terrorists in Pakistan and keep the Gitmo terrorist detention facilities open despite his campaign pledge to shut down the facility? Heck, why not let all the terrorists at Gitmo out onto American streets if he really was apart of this secret, nefarious plot for a radical takeover of America by Islamists!

Have those who believe this asinine and dirty theory actually taken a couple seconds to think about its implications?

I have written strong articles in opposition to Barack Obama’s policies and I will continue to do so as long as he pushes policies that I think are harmful. However, we have to have responsible leadership in the Republican Party that opposes Obama on principle and reasoned discourse, not idiotic falsities. Conservative commentators, leaders and thinkers have a responsibility to denounce idiocy put forward under the conservative banner. And make no mistake, these theories are textbook examples of idiocy.

Republicans and conservatives have a real opportunity to take back the country in 2010 and 2012. But we aren’t going to do it by promoting outlandish conspiracies – and even if it could be won that way, there most certainly wouldn’t be any honor in it.  

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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