The Shadow

One quickly emerging element following the debt ceiling debate and the resulting GOPer triumphalism--which always ends up screeching in obvious hatred--is the flat-out recognition of the worst GOPer extremism become mainstream, especially in its attitude toward the President of the United States.

This piece in salon and especially the accompanying video from Hardball is remarkably forthright in stating what's been going on consistently: the very personal attacks on President Obama, reflecting the furious response to his election.  Lies are not exactly rare in partisan politics, but the virulence of these lies--even more vicious than they were when applied to Bill Clinton or John Kerry--has been and continues to be more extreme.

The extra anger--reflecting the extra fear--is not that hard to trace: it's racism.   The recent braying loosening of the tongue by a GOPer member of Congress who likened President Obama to a tar baby is just the most recent in a long line of just the obvious tells of a pervasive attitude among GOPer officeholders and both their big money and TPer supporters.  Wrote a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor: "The specter of two national Republican figures apologizing for calling President Obama, the first African-American president, alternately a "tar baby" and "boy" gave new fuel to speculation on the left that, underneath much of the criticism of the president and his policies, lurks the shadow of racism."

The piece concludes: Nevertheless, to some critics, the gaffes are illuminating bits of evidence to underscore what many believe is an essentially racist view of Obama by some in America's conservative circles.

Given that language is the primary purveyor of our deepest thoughts, as well as the fact that language use is often unconscious, "even a slip of the tongue can reflect the kind of prevalence of racism that still exists within our culture," says Shawn Parry-Giles, director of the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership at the University of Maryland in College Park. "Progressives would say it's part of a larger conspiracy to target voters to use Obama's race as a means to help defeat him."

I don't think this racist dog whistle stuff is even always unconscious.  It's deliberate.  You say it, it gets covered.  You "apologize," and it gets repeated again. 

But such forthright analysis is rare.  How else excuse a media environment that could not make this consistently obvious, so that the rhetoric and actions of GOPer members of Congress--the very people who gave G.W. Bush his blank check--could get away with attacking President Obama for their deficit:

 "By any rational accounting, Bush and the GOP Congress that gave him everything he wanted from 2001 to 2007 should be held responsible for the entire $10.6 trillion national debt -- along with the $1.3 trillion yearly deficit they handed to Obama, as well as the Wall Street crisis and bank bailouts.

It's that simple: With no Bush income tax cuts, no unfunded Medicare drug benefit, and no off-budget Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.S. balance sheet would have been in fine shape for his successor. Then government investment needed to rescue the economy from the doldrums wouldn't have seemed so alarming."