{"id":5127,"date":"2008-10-25T23:34:53","date_gmt":"2008-10-26T06:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5127"},"modified":"2008-10-25T23:34:53","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T06:54:41","slug":"5127","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5127","title":{"rendered":"Freak Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"adolf-hitler-and-barack-obama-jpg.jpg\"You know, given the position of the McCain\/Palin ticket in the polls, and given that the country is about to elect its first African-American president, I know the right is going to go bonkers here in the last nine days of the campaign. Still, it’s a bit breathtaking to see the meltdown, which makes the craziest tinfoil hat musings of the DFHs look like bouquets for Dubya. I misdoubt that Obama Derangement Syndrome is going to make Bush Derangement Syndrome look like Cute Puppy Derangement Syndrome.<\/p>\n

A few items for your perusal tonight. First, from Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania GOP, fresh off of trying to sell the Ashley Todd hoax, has sent a letter out to Jews in the state, warning them that Barack Obama is Hitler. No, really<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008,” the e-mail reads. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year!”<\/p>\n

A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was “Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA – Victory 2008.”<\/p>\n

It warns “Fellow Jewish Voters” of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s qualifications over those of Obama.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because nobody is more likely to be the next Adolf Hitler than a biracial liberal Democrat.<\/p>\n

There’s so much hilarity here, and it’s hard to say what the best part is. Is it the fact that the Pennsylvania GOP’s disavowal boils down to saying yeah, we sent it, but we really didn’t mean to, and besides, it’s this contractor who did it? Or is it the fact that the contractor says he was told to send it by the GOP? Or is it that McCain Pennsylvania spokesperson Peter Feldman — the same Peter Feldman who was telling reporters that the “B” on Ashley Todd’s face stood for “Barack” — has parachuted in to note that the McCain campaign “rejects politics that degrade our civics”? All I know is that it’s lucky for the McCain campaign that they haven’t pinned all their hopes for the election on winning Pennsylvania. What? They have? Well, that sucks for them.<\/p>\n

The second meltdown comes from the Corner, where Mark Levin’s brain has disconnected<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we’d see such a thing in our country – not yet anyway – but I sense what’s occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can’t help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can’t explain themselves in an intelligent way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, all those smart people endorsing Obama for completely irrational reasons, like Obama having shown himself to be steady during the economic crisis, or John McCain having picked an unqualified fool to be his vice president, thus showing he was unserious about the presidency. Who can understand such gibberish? I mean, it’s like they picked a guy to vote for based on who they’d like to have a beer with — the insanity!<\/p>\n

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama’s name on it, which adorns everything from Obama’s plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama’s name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mean, can you imagine — a campaign that tries to get the word out about their candidate! John McCain, in contrast, doesn’t even mention that he’s running for president. He just sorta ambles into the room, mutters, “Maverick!” and moves on, like a decent American.<\/p>\n

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I’ve never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama’s past influences and radicalism \u2014 from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers \u2014 have been raised by non-traditional news sources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, remember in March, when CNN did nothing but talk about Jeremiah Wright for a month? Never happened.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama’s entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The “change” he peddles is not new. We’ve seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama’s appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the “the proletariat,” as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know what? I’m just going to back away slowly now, nodding and smiling, until I can make a run for it. While I’m escaping, enjoy these words from our sponsors.<\/p>\n

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Is he gone? Phew.<\/p>\n

It’s only going to get crazier from here, my friends. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the right after Barack Obama wins; I suspect there will be a battle for the soul of the party between the heirs of the Rockefeller wing and the True Believers. The Rockefeller wing could build the GOP back into a respectible party inside of a decade — one that is truly conservative, and thus a good foil for the Democrats. But I suspect the True Believers — the people for whom a modest marginal tax increase on people making $250,000 a year is tantamount to Stalinism — I think they’ll win the day. If so, the GOP will be lost for a generation. They’ll come back, some day — the pendulum always swings back in the end. But it will be a long, bitter struggle for them. And it will lead to more insanity before it gets better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, given the position of the McCain\/Palin ticket in the polls, and given that the country is about to elect its first African-American president, I know the right is going to go bonkers here in the last nine days … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}