HATE SPEECH, THREATS OF VIOLENCE, DEHUMANIZING OUR PRESIDENT, LIES AND MORE
Look, I am possibly just as guilty of being inflammatory and recalcitrant and you might argue that negative campaigns have been with us for as long as we can all remember. You are right but there is a significant change, a very negative and impacting change and we don’t like where it is heading; at least most of us.
It is said that scare tactics to sway voters have been around for quite some time…yes they have…I remember the television ads the Democrats put out against Goldwater with the underlying innuendo that the mushroom cloud would happen if Goldwater was elected. It is a fact that during that campaign he was portrayed as a radical, right wing fanatic…no doubt that he was all that but the nastiness was not there…not as much as we have today.
The vigor in which Democrats displayed in getting Nixon impeached was not done with white silk gloves, it was downright nasty and eventually the much hated Nixon was forced to resign…yet, we still were not anywhere near what we see now.
Enter Karl Rove and politics totally changed. The man had a talent for putting out the most pervasive, divisive and misleading campaigns and talking points that set us on the path of hate speech and the spread of lies that we see today. It became the trademark way of conducting politics and it is downright ugly and un-American.
The way I see it, it is not just about one political philosophy against the other…it goes deeper than that. We are divided along racial lines; we are split on economic issues, we disagree on 
the criteria of how big or small the government should be; we are polarized on religious grounds. Furthermore, we are also hopelessly split into the haves and have nots…the never ending class wars and the redistribution of wealth.
I don’t blame the Republicans for trying to keep the super rich from paying their fair share; after all, most people don’t like to part with their money. But it is a totally different thing to take your country to the brink of bankruptcy, piling on the national debt by borrowing money from adversaries that will be in fact a tax increase or a debt burden on our children and grandchildren.
It is also about culture wars; there are some out there who were very comfortable and happy with the fifties and sixties while some of us were not. There are those who are appalled by the growth of minorities and the embracing of diversity…that just does not compute in their minds, it does not fit their criteria of what America should be and they are mad as hell that a black man is now occupying the White House.
Anita Bryant back in the seventies doesn’t hold a candle to the Mormons and Evangelicals’ tactics and hate-filled lies they used to oppose gay marriage in California.
Carrie Prajean, in her ego trip as a goodie-goodie two shoes beauty queen came out and made very hurtful statements using her beauty crown as a way to spread her narrow-minded concept of marriage.
We did see a lot of opposition to President Bush and some of it was not pleasant…but then again, neither was he. Bush became arrogant and daring, seeking to make the Presidency the most powerful of the three branches of government. He had Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld to tell him what to do and they did not have the best interests of America in mind. So that if you claim that the attacks were ugly I would say to you that they were not ugly enough, Bush should have been impeached and even today, I think that he should be handed over to the World Court and tried as a war criminal.
Not that I want to offer justification for my indignation but I have to fight back…not to do so means that those who are conducting all this xenophobic, 
racist, homophobic, elitist and economic war against the middle and poor classes would take my passive behavior as a sign of approval, as a green light to turn America into a WASPH (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant heterosexual) society with the continuation of the benefits, perks and tax breaks for the top 2% of richest Americans. I don’t want to see the middle class decimated because that spells the end of America as we know it. I would like to see the poor to survive and thrive, to improve their lot and to get a piece of the pie. I don’t want to see America turned into a theocracy and I certainly don’t want to either leave an insurmountable debt to my children so that those super rich can continue to live in the lap of luxury in their Hamptons second home.
I resent the far right using bogus issues like the President’s birth certificate, the Muslim Learning Center or the opposition to granting equal rights to gay Americans, all distractions to be used so that they can energize their extremist base.
Not even talking about the Republican’s dismal record on the economy and the ineptitude of their leader George Bush that left us with an economic crisis and a horrific debt…why don’t we examine who they are bashing? Republicans and Tea Baggers are Bashing Latinos (Arizona law) with a pretext of Immigration reform and protecting our borders. Republicans are bashing gays (Calif. Prop. 8) and the religious factions (Mormons/Evangelicals) pushing their definition of marriage and their lies. The Republicans are bashing blacks (Rand Paul regretting the Civil Rights Act of the 60’s and false accusations of racism that caused the resignations of several public servants) and now we see the bashing of Muslim Americans…where will this all stop? Who are they left with? Who is Conservative enough for them? Who is WASPH enough for them?
- Christianity: (58.3%[9] to 82.3%)
- Unaffiliated, including atheist or agnostic (11.6% to 37.3%[9])
- Judaism (1.2%[3] to 2.2%[9])
- Islam (0.6%[9][3] to 1.6%)
- Buddhism (0.5%[3] to 0.9%)
- Hinduism (0.4%)
- other (1.4%)
Numbers: There were 35.3 million Hispanics in the 2000 Census. The Latino population grew by 38% since 1990 while the total U.S. population only grew 9% over the same period.
- Youth: 12.3 million are under 18 years, or 17% of the total.
- Older People: Hispanics make up 4.8% of the U.S. population older than 50 years.
It is difficult to tabulate the current number of registered voters. In 2004 during the last Presidential season here was the breakdown: 55 million registered Republicans;72 million registered Democrats, 42 million registered as independents, under some other minor party or with a "No Party" designation; a total 169 million out of about 201.5 million who were eligible to vote.
DO THE MATH
When you subtract 72 million Democrats, approximately 22 million blacks, 15 million Latinos, 5 million gay, and a couple of other millions thrown in for good measure which would include Muslims, Jews, agnostics and atheists, and a shitload of other independents who don’t buy into the Republican lies and tactics…I really don’t see how they are going to obtain a majority on either house of Congress and it is even more remote a possibility that they will be able to defeat President Obama in 2012. Even if unemployment remains as bad as it is…Americans are not that stupid.
Or are we hearing the last agonizing cries of a dying party in the form of hate speech and dishonest politics, lies and fear mongering? The Republican Party may very well be carving itself a hole into irrelevancy.
PHOTO SOURCE: http://jeff.scott.tripod.com/goldwater.html
SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States