Fighting Back in the Age of Obama
Bob CescaOn some topics a middle way can, no doubt, be found between the left and conservative evangelicals -- but that doesn't mean hugging-it-out with someone who quite literally said that making abortion rare is like denying the Holocaust. Just because Rick Warren is jolly and friendly doesn't mean that some of his stated views are any less incendiary than other similar awfulness spoken by the likes of Rick Santorum or Pat Buchanan or Rush Limbaugh.
So where's the line here? How crazy is too crazy before we're permitted to let slip the dogs of progressive war and forcefully declare "enough!"? As someone who has followed the president-elect's career, I can't imagine that he's suggesting that we're not allowed to stand up for our values with an appropriate level of force.
That's precisely why this could be President-elect Obama's first post-election political blunder.
Rather than asking us to accept a less offensive character from the right, the president-elect has asked us to embrace someone whose more obnoxious assertions rival the most extreme views of the opposition -- on the most extreme and divergent issues. So we're being told that vocal opposition to even the most terrible proclamations of the far-right is simply unacceptable in Obama's America. Affording him the benefit of the doubt, however, I don't think this is the president-elect's intention, but that's exactly how it comes off. In other words, if there are more Warren debacles on the way, the president-elect could end up permanently and irreversibly alienating his left flank while castrating his most loyal supporters, thus laying out a nice smooth track for the on-coming Republican crazy train.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/fighting-back-in-the-age_b_153376.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
