Flashbacks of the 2008 election this morning. Listening to NPR earlier than I wanted to be up, Morning Edition was doing a story on the President's outreach for selling Healthcare Reform. Apparently, Obama is headed into "real america" on the Virginia/Tennessee border where he will hold a Townhall meeting at a Krogers store. NPR, bless their hearts and my very tenuous donation, highlighted much of the negative feedback from locals. In particular, there was one man interviewed who expressed what is probably a pervasive opinion. This gentleman was laid off from his drywall job and had no health care insurance. His two kids are receiving healthcare through Medicaid. Guess what he had to say about "Obama's" healthcare reform proposals. Go on, take a guess.
"I'm completely opposed to Obama's healthcare reform," said the gentleman with two kids on Medicaid and no health insurance for him or his wife. When asked why he was opposed to it, he stated, in the most matter-of-fact way, "Cause he's trying to give more stuff to 'the Blacks' by taking from Whites."
Clearly, this person is the poster-child for the success of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Rupert Murdoch. Here is a person, so steeped in racial politics that he can't even imagine a world where a Black President isn't out to get revenge against Whites. This is a man for whom the facts are a complete and utter waste of time. And how does he really differ from those great pillars of American media? They are the beficiaries of his ignorance, while he still remains a victim. One has to wonder, without the senseless hatred that is being broadcast under the guise of "punditry," or "Opinion," or "Fair and Balanced," without the assurance that hundreds of thousands of equally ignorant people who do not want to have to deal in facts will vote for even the most corrupt, inept, and self-serving Republican, so long as that Republican can blithely play upon a deep-seated guilt/revenge fear among conservative whites.
This is what the Republicans are now totally dependent on. This is what the Party of no-change counts on. This man is the crowning achievement of the (not a natural born US Citizen) billionaire Rupert Murdoch. Of all the ways one could invest the billions he has, this is the result that Murdoch, an aging man, wants to leave as his legacy. And when Rush and Glenn and you too BillO, when you all are doing your taxes in April and looking for every trick and loophole to make sure that the effective tax rate on the hundreds of millions of dollars you made this year is lower than the rate paid by simple drywaller without health insurance, won't your hearts swell with pride at being such smart white men?