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What timing these right-wingers, and sadly, a minority of Hillary's supporters have! I give them a lot of credit at their ability to turn on a dime a smear when it's run its course to a new smear regardless of the merit of that smear.
For six months, we witnessed Fox News blatantly informing its viewers that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Americans were told on a 24 hour news loop at Fox that Barack had even attended a madrassa overseas as a boy. Barack wasn't just a Muslim, he was raised as a militant muslim at that! And so went the lie. A militant, madrassa-raised, Muslim! Oh, and just for spice, right wingers were reminded that he was also black. Can't leave that part out, no sir!
And from the Free Republic and GOP friendly websites to the radio audiences of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, conservatives were spoon-fed not only this false caricature, but it was important to point out that his middle name was Hussein and that his first name sounded like Osama. Osama and Hussein and a militant, madrassa-raised black muslim!
And even though a lie, Mark Twain said, can get half way around the world before truth can even put its boots on, the truth did finally get its boots on. Americans learned that not only was Barack not a Muslim, but that he was a Christian and had been a member of the same Christian church for over 20 years! Senator Obama talked about praying to Jesus in one of his debates. And pop! The great lie about Obama being a Muslim was discredited. Barack Obama was a Christian. Ooops!
However, in no time at all, the jackals could be heard. "Well, well, well. If we can't falsely smear Obama anymore as a militant, black Muslim, then we'll go after his Christian church." You know, the same way that Mike Huckabee and James Dobson and the evangelical right smeared the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney. And anyway, Christians attacking Christians is a much more familiar territory, isn't it? Hell, America was practically founded on Christians attacking other Christians and even waging war with other Christian nations.
But because Obama's membership is with the greater United Church of Christ, whose brand of Christianity is very mainstream and tame compared to that of Pentecostals and that of the Mormons, there was little to no theological curiosities that could be used against Obama as had been the case with Romney's Mormonism. The result: the target had to be Obama's Christian preacher.
And so we now have Fox's very own Greta Van Susteren, a full-blown Scientologist herself, speaking out with professed disdain about Obama's church and pastor. Fox was back with game against Obama once again. They get you as a Muslim or they'll get you as a Christian.
Sadly, of all the Democratic candidates running against Senator Obama, only one campaign ever played the Muslim card against Barack and that would be the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Starting in Iowa, the Barack-is-a-Muslim e-mails went out from her campaign workers, later her spokespersons and high-profile supporters never missed an opportunity to slip in the "Hussein" middle name when speaking about Obama. So much so that Sixty Minutes grilled Senator Clinton about whether she actually believed that Obama was a Muslim. We've all seen the video and we all know her calculated, Clintonian response, don't we? Amazingly, it was John McCain, of all people, who pissed off a valuable rightwing talk radio host by condemning him for repeating the name Hussein when referring to Obama.
Those here at the DU who have played the Muslim card and now the anti-Jeremiah Wright card against Obama to further Clinton have done so with varying degrees of skill.
But I am impressed how some Democrats who oppose Obama turned on that same very same right-wing dime, and in such perfect timing with Fox and the rest of the right-wingers from calling Obama a militant Muslim to calling him an anti-American Christian.
Talk about synchronized dancing!
In any event, they don't hate him as a Muslim and they don't hate him as a Christian. They just hate him.
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