Are the Republicans and the Democrats both parties of whack-jobs?
I find a new Harris poll of Republicans to be among the most frightening things I've read in years.
For eight years, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) raged among Democrats and Leftists. Despite the fact that Democratic election officials were totally in charge of the count in all the contested counties in Florida in 2000, we're still hearing nonsense about Bush having stolen Florida and the presidency. Even lamer justifications are given for similar lies about Ohio in 2004.
Within months of the slander that Bush was AWOL during his National Guard service first was uttered, members of the Guard who remembered serving with Bush during the period in question came forward to refute it. But the charges are still being made. Even John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, repeated them during the 2004 campaign.
Wholly unimpressed with the fact that every intelligence service on Earth believed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, or even with the fact that no reasonable person doubts that he would have replenished his supplies the moment UN inspectors stopped looking, the malicious continue to repeat that the reason we went to war in Iraq was that Bush L-I-E-D-D-D! There is even a colony of whack-jobs- the so-called "Truthers-" who suggest that Dubyah personally plotted the 9/11 attacks!
All of that was- and is- scary enough. But a new Harris poll has come out that's even more frightening. We need one political party in this country composed of rational people, and apparently it isn't the Republicans, either.
According to the poll, 57% of Republicans believe the nonsensical fabrication that President Obama- who was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades- is a Muslim. 45% accept the absurd premise of the Republican equivalent of the "Truthers," the "Birthers-" who falsely insist that Mr. Obama (for whom the State of Hawaii issued an official birth certificate in the name of "Barack Hussein Obama II") was not born in the United States.
And it gets even crazier. More than a quarter of Republicans apparently believe that Obama may be the Antichrist!
Christians, at least, ought to be concerned about the Eighth Commandment. Bearing false witness isn't a very Christian thing to do. And all Republicans need to be concerned about reality. If this poll is accurate, most Republicans are at least as caught up in malicious, extremist slander against President Obama as most Democrats are against former President Bush.
That simply isn't good. Somebody has got to act like grown-ups here, people. Or at least manifest some contact with reality- and some acquaintance with sanity, if not elementary civility. Right now neither of our great political parties show much sign of being up to the challenge.
ADDENDUM: I suppose one can draw some comfort from the fact that the Columbia Journalism Review- not, as Hot Air notes, generally a quarter from whence come spirited defenses of the Right- has attacked the credibility of the Harris poll and its methodology on a number of counts.
For eight years, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) raged among Democrats and Leftists. Despite the fact that Democratic election officials were totally in charge of the count in all the contested counties in Florida in 2000, we're still hearing nonsense about Bush having stolen Florida and the presidency. Even lamer justifications are given for similar lies about Ohio in 2004.
Within months of the slander that Bush was AWOL during his National Guard service first was uttered, members of the Guard who remembered serving with Bush during the period in question came forward to refute it. But the charges are still being made. Even John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, repeated them during the 2004 campaign.
Wholly unimpressed with the fact that every intelligence service on Earth believed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, or even with the fact that no reasonable person doubts that he would have replenished his supplies the moment UN inspectors stopped looking, the malicious continue to repeat that the reason we went to war in Iraq was that Bush L-I-E-D-D-D! There is even a colony of whack-jobs- the so-called "Truthers-" who suggest that Dubyah personally plotted the 9/11 attacks!
All of that was- and is- scary enough. But a new Harris poll has come out that's even more frightening. We need one political party in this country composed of rational people, and apparently it isn't the Republicans, either.
According to the poll, 57% of Republicans believe the nonsensical fabrication that President Obama- who was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades- is a Muslim. 45% accept the absurd premise of the Republican equivalent of the "Truthers," the "Birthers-" who falsely insist that Mr. Obama (for whom the State of Hawaii issued an official birth certificate in the name of "Barack Hussein Obama II") was not born in the United States.
And it gets even crazier. More than a quarter of Republicans apparently believe that Obama may be the Antichrist!
Christians, at least, ought to be concerned about the Eighth Commandment. Bearing false witness isn't a very Christian thing to do. And all Republicans need to be concerned about reality. If this poll is accurate, most Republicans are at least as caught up in malicious, extremist slander against President Obama as most Democrats are against former President Bush.
That simply isn't good. Somebody has got to act like grown-ups here, people. Or at least manifest some contact with reality- and some acquaintance with sanity, if not elementary civility. Right now neither of our great political parties show much sign of being up to the challenge.
ADDENDUM: I suppose one can draw some comfort from the fact that the Columbia Journalism Review- not, as Hot Air notes, generally a quarter from whence come spirited defenses of the Right- has attacked the credibility of the Harris poll and its methodology on a number of counts.
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