Wednesday, September 24, 2014

WHY RIGHT-WINGERS ARE HITTING THIS COFFEE CUP THING SO HARD

I wrote about Coffee-Cup-Ghazi yesterday, not realizing it would become a massive story on the right and in the mainstream media. I know that the process of cultivating Obama-hate is relentless on the right, but in October 2012, when I wrote a post about a photo of Obama saluting with a cellphone in his non-saluting hand, I found only scattered outrage -- and now I learn that the photo in question was from early 2010, and barely caused a ripple at the time. Why is this different?

Right-wingers are working this much harder because, as midterms approach, they're worried about the political impact of this anti-ISIS campaign. There are a lot of reasons to question Obama's strategy, but the public wants some action, preferably not involving ground troops, and the administration is delivering exactly that. The policy may prove wrongheaded in the long run, but the right is worried that the long run will be long after November.

OBAMA GOLFS WHILE BUTCHERS BEHEAD YANKS!!! was really working for the GOP. Notice you haven't heard any Obama golf jokes for a while. The feckless-president-ignores-terror narrative had Republicans believing they were on course to make gains, in particular, with female voters, specifically the so-called security moms. That's not going to last if there are bombs falling on Raqqah.

Maybe you don't believe that this campaign is going to be a winner with the voters. The point, though, is that Republicans probably believe it is. They know how much electoral benefit they got in 2002 from 9/11 and from pressuring Democrats to sign on to an authorization of force in Iraq.

So they have to seize whatever they can that might undermine Obama's image right now. They were calling him "unserious," but they're afraid that swing voters think those bombs look surprisingly serious. So the right is working extra hard to seize on anything that makes Obama look ridiculous.

5 comments:

Victor said...

No matter how hard they try to make President Obama look ridiculous, he'll never approach the ridiculousness of W at this most serious.

That inept assclown set a standard that I don't think anyone can matc...

Wait - I have to see who they decide to nominate in 2016.

Because if the Republicans win, since Ike, every Republican President has been worse than the one before.

So, gRand-standing Paul, or Teddy Cruz-ader, could actually make W look like Ike.

aimai said...

Also I think this is a form of attack that grows out of the inevitable sympathy/concern that normal americans would have given the two recent attempts by lunatics to invade the white house. The Republicans instantly rushed to attack the Secret Service heads as incompetent, while excusing the Secret Service agents who actually let the guys through, because they saw another chance to hamstring and attack the White House/Administration as "poor leaders" or slackers or something. But as soon as they began agitating for hearings etc... they also realized that any eharings would inevitably turn up the fact that the sS has been cut to the bone by sequestration and right wing hijinks. So I think they are also casting about to find Obama somehow rhetorically or visually responsible for his own SS/Military failings--as though his visual "disloyalty" and "anti militarism" is somehow responsible for the failings of his SS team--they probably hate him as much as the military guards hate him, would be the right wing interpretation. Or "what can you expect but slackness" when the President himself is so slack?

Joseph Nobles said...

Saw the web comic Terminal Lance retweeting pictures of people saluting with a drink in their hands. He's ex-Marine, and his comic talks about life in the Marines, so a soldier-heavy following.

Steve M. said...

Thanks for that tip, Joseph. (Terminal Lance's Twitter is here.)

Unknown said...

yeah Terminal Lance is very funny.. I have gone through his comics and they hit.the mark.

terminal lance corporal means that you will never ever get promoted to corporal before you are terminated, i.e. leave the service. so you are always junior, often to people in the service for a fraction of your time.

funny, he was promoted after he left!