Richard A. Stitt: Get Ready For A GOP Hate-fest Orgy Like No Other

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt

William Shakespeare wrote in Richard III, "For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell, Villain, thou know'st no law of God nor man: No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity."
 
Yet, even Shakespeare's vilest beast could never sink into the miasma of filth and lies that the Republican Party and their standard-bearer, John McCain, have sunk. Unfortunately, the latest fusillade of lies and slander aimed at Barack Obama is only the beginning of the level of toxicity and aura of stench that will saturate the public airwaves on Screech Radio and the Fox News Channel between now and November. Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten encapsulated the degree of hard Right-Wing venom and hate.
 
Barack Obama's biggest obstacles in his quest to reach the White House in November are the Screech Radio talk show hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel with their venom-spewing talking heads, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. In addition to the lineup of incendiary cacophony of hate are Michael Savage, The New York Times columnist William Kristol, Newsweek columnist and former Bush chief propagandist Karl Rove, the ever-vituperative Ann Coulter, acid-tongued The Washington Post commentator Charles Krauthammer and others who are too numerous to name.
 
The reality is, no matter how optimistic and hopeful most Americans are or whether we believe that we need a clean break from the despotic, anti-U.S. Constitution rule-by-decree of G.W. Bush and his cortege of cronies and kleptocrats, all too many will vote against their own interests out of sheer prejudice.
 
Screech Radio with their legions of blind-faith ovines, are confident that their messages of hate, slander, and calumny will energize the racists and xenophobes to go to the polls and vote, not for hope and change, but against a black man.
 
Like the robotic and automaton disc jockeys of country & western radio stations that succeeded in trashing (at least temporarily) the Dixie Chicks after one of the group's singers, Natalie Maines, made an offhand remark, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," so too will Barack Obama be vilified and his character smeared by Screech Radio Limbaugh loyalists whose deep-seated bigotry will be loudly disseminated.
 
The Republican National Committee will decide how to spend the tens of millions of dollars pouring into John McCain's coffers, much of it now coming in from corporate lobbyists and oil company interests. Like ants releasing their pheromones to other members of their colonies, the pre-programmed Screech Radio DJ's will launch their blitzkrieg against Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, the sole purpose of which is to get out the vote for the Republican base of the militant Religious Right, neo Nazis and xenophobes such as Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, who rails against illegal immigrants, waving the American flag in one hand and brandishing a shotgun in the other.  
 
I don't want to hear that racism isn't a huge obstacle to Obama's chances of being elected in November. It is. It is as real and vicious as we have seen and it will get worse. The transparent proof of that exists in the current polls in the former slave-holding states in the Deep South. These polls have been consistent ever since Obama emerged from the primaries as the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee. Look at any of these states' poll numbers and you'll see double-digit leads for John McCain. In every one of them.
 
This is no coincidence. By any measure, Barack Obama should be leading by double digits and he should win the November election in a landslide.
 
Shortly after the 2004 election, it was revealed that of the 28 poorest states in America, 26 of them are below the Mason-Dixon Line. The majority of people in these states should be concerned with the $12.5 billion-per-month spending on Bush's Iraq War, rising unemployment, jobs being cut almost daily, increasing inflation that is outpacing all working Americans' wages, massive home foreclosures, rampant, out-of-control insider trading and oil speculation trading by the Wall Street hucksters and collapsing major investment firms such as Bear Stearns, Wachovia, IndyMac Bank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac where the Feeding Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Treasury Department (what's left of it) sidekick Henry Paulson have pumped untold billions to try and prop up the house of cards that is the Bush economic disaster.
 
However, according to all the major election polls, the majority of people in these states would rather see four more years of Bush-McCain corruption and catastrophes with infinite war and endless borrowing and spending. Our economy continues to go in the tank while greedy corporate CEOs' salaries and bonuses, as Vincent Bugliosi states in his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, exceed the average workers' annual wages by over 530 to 1.   
 
There's more, all of it predictable. Unlike Bill Clinton whose support Al Gore eschewed in the 2000 election campaign, George W. Bush will not be a stay-at-home campaigner. G.W. Bush, in case anyone hasn't noticed, is a great fundraiser, raising nearly $1 billion for Republican candidates and issues over the last 7½ years.
 
Once G.W. Bush hits the campaign trail, he will be using Air Force One, barnstorming the country just as if he is in reelection mode. For Bush, the November election is as much a referendum about him and his legacy as it is for his policies while he's been in office. A John McCain win will be interpreted by G.W. Bush as a vindication for his war policies and an approval of his economic course as well as his budgetary decisions that empowered the wealthiest 1% of the population with his $1.35 trillion tax cut giveaway.
 
The "stay on message" Republicans will continue the incendiary and alarmist tone that will include jeremiads about mushroom clouds bursting over our cities and portents of doom that if we don't keep fighting the Iraq War, we will have to fight off the terrorists in the aisles of Wal-Mart, mano a mano.
 
With all this pessimism, what can Barack Obama do to win the November election given such daunting obstacles? I think he can and will win if he confronts the reality that there are true swing states or toss-up states as the major pollsters have been reporting. The only state in the South that may be winnable for Obama is Florida.
 
The majority of voters in the Old Confederacy apparently would rather put Jesus on their license plates and wave the Confederate flag over their statehouse rotundas to celebrate (and flaunt) their "Southern heritage" than they would vote for the interests of their jobs whose salaries are being eaten up by inflation while forsaking an opportunity to bring affordable health care coverage to all Americans. 
 
Obama's 50-state strategy is ill-advised and he should abandon any Pollyannaish attempts at winning any of the states in Dixie. The polls consistently reveal that the plurality of voters in this region of the country choose to ignore the solvency of Social Security and Medicare or funding for adequate health care for themselves and their families. They seem willing to stand by and watch as their wages continue to erode under a decidedly pro big-business administration that pushed aggressively for tax cuts for the wealthy, war without end and volatile oil and gasoline prices that continue to enrich some of our country's antagonists such as Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
 
Instead, Barack Obama should concentrate all his campaign capital in key Midwest states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota and Mountain states such as Colorado and New Mexico. He should not waste spending one thin dime in the Old South. He'll get no electoral votes there, regardless.
 
As the polls stand today, Obama should easily win the popular vote. By my own reckoning, using a low end Electoral College vote count, he should receive 273 electoral college votes, enough to win the presidency without a single former slave-owning state.
 
"It's the racism, stupid," will not be the vocal message that will be repeated in this election. However, the unspoken truth is: It's the racism, stupid.
 
The message that voters need to send loud and clear, now more than ever, is that America has become more inclusive, more progressive, and fairer. We have moved beyond the genteel, patriarchal paralysis of the Old  plantation South.
 
Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas

 

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