David B. Shemano wrote: > What is the evidence that the Right "hates" Obama (in any meaningful general > sense -- there are always outliers). Compared to what? Anything more > unusual than the Left's feelings for Bush or Reagan? <
As I said before, a lot of the "hatred" (for Obama, Pelosi, etc.) isn't real but is instead strategic, though there is a tendency for the rank-and-file troops and even the leadership to believe their own propaganda. It's hard to tell whether or not the "Right" hates Obama more than the "Left" hated Bush. The difference is more one of the _organization_ and power of the hatred: much more than any element of the Left, the anti-BHO forces that are organized as the GOP establishment form a "Leninist democratic centralist party,"[*] in which the Party Line is passed down from the top leaders in the form of talking points and the like. On the other hand, the Teabaggers are much more disorganized compared to the GOP establishment but tend to be more fervent (and less strategic) in their beliefs, and more responsive to demagogues such as Glenn Beck and the Divine Ms. Palin and money-sources such as Dick Armey. These forces are not separate, of course: the latter leaders (unlike the Teabagging rank and file) are part of the GOP establishment, which also includes Fox news. (The GOP establishment/Teabag duo is not a monolithic organization. To some extent the silliest anti-BHO rhetoric is the result of competition, as one GOPster tries to one-up another.) One aspect of the power of these forces is the relatively favorable treatment that the "liberal" media give them compared to what is given to the "Left." For example, Meet the Press and similar shows have had Newt Gingrich come back again and again, with almost no shows having other former or actual Speakers of the House as guests. > I see strong disagreement and a general assumption that his [BHO's] moderate >presentation masks his inner socialist (e.g. the D'souza and Kurtz books), but >no real personal hatred. At a personal level, I think there was a lot more >dislike for Clinton, based upon his "Slick Willie" persona. In fact, I think >most conservatives find Obama, at the personal level, significantly less >annoying than Gore, Kerry, Pelosi, Reid.< Above, my focus was on political "hatred." That's distinct from personal hatred, though the two can and do interact and reinforce each other: annoyance with Clinton helped fuel political opposition (the silly impeachment hearings) while differences on policy encourage personal enmity. -- Jim Devine / "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." - John Kenneth Galbraith [*] like most or all of these parties on the Left, this group is neither democratic (since all decisions are made at the top) nor Leninist (since Lenin's ideas were more nuanced, varied over time, and sometimes seemed to be self-contradictory). A better term would be "a Stalinist Party." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
