YAHOO:
No matter what President Obama says about his religion, the debate over whether he is secretly Muslim continues to rage within the GOP. And a new poll finds that Republicans are now taking that rumor one step further. A Newsweek survey released Monday found that a majority of Republicans believe that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."
According to the poll, 14 percent of Republicans said that from what they knew of Obama, they thought such allegations were "definitely true"; 38 percent thought the allegations were "probably true." Meanwhile, 33 percent of Republicans thought they were "probably not true" and 7 percent thought they were "definitely not true." Asked whether Obama favors the interests of Muslim Americans over other groups of Americans, 59 percent Republicans said yes, whereas 34 percent said he has "generally been evenhanded."
The poll poses some dilemmas for the GOP as the party prepares for the thick of the general-election season. For months, the GOP has maintained a significant edge over Democrats in generic congressional ballot polling -- with the most recent Gallup survey finding Republicans with an unprecedented 10-point lead. The GOP also leads Dems when it comes to voter enthusiasm ahead the November election -- a number that typically serves as a reliable indicator of who will turn out to the polls and who won't.
Most Americans polled have made clear that their poor opinion of Obama will determine how they vote this fall. But are rumors about Obama's religion playing into GOP enthusiasm? There are hints that Republicans might think so.
Most GOP officials have tried to steer clear of the Obama/Muslim rumors. On NBC's "Meet the Press" this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was taking the president "at his word" that he was a Christian. "I don't think that's in dispute," he added. Last week, after a Republican National Committee official tweeted -- and then removed -- a message questioning Obama's religion, RNC spokesman Doug Heye toldthe Hotline's Reid Wilson that the party wasn't making an issue of Obama's religious beliefs. "An errant or sarcastically intended tweet aside, the RNC has never spoken about the president's Christianity because it is both crystal-clear and a nonissue," Heye said.
Yet it's one thing not to encourage a rumor and quite another actively to defend Obama. So far, no Republican has offered a full-throated defense of Obama against the Muslim rumors. Republican leaders simply see no political advantage in an issue that may be helping them to undermine Obama and the Democrats ahead of a crucial election. That's especially the case now, when a significant majority of their base seems driven by intense dislike of the president.
In 2008, John McCain learned firsthand what it's like to challenge a member of one's own party on misinformation, when he pushed back against a supporter at a town hall who tried to insinuate that Obama was an "Arab." "No, ma'am," McCain said, taking away her microphone. "He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements when on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not [Arab]." As McCain tried to calm the crowd down, people booed the Arizona senator, with one man yelling, "Obama is a terrorist!" You can watch the video here:
Flashbacks like this serve as a powerful reminder to GOP leaders that although they may not encourage overt, official talk of an alleged Obama connection to Islam, neither will they be especially well served by any efforts to go to bat for Obama, even in the cause of tamping down the fringe elements within their own party.
The real problem is that after all the apologies, the czars, the appointments, the Van Jones's, the health care, the blank stares and Spock like speeches, the lack of placing the hand on the heart during the pledge, or MAKING THE PLEDGE, the condemning of the Constitution, the wife's continuous condemnatory remarks, the 'clinging' comments, the denigration of the religion and culture of more rural or southern america, the "I just want to spread it around', the aiming at business, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE FRUSTRATED BECAUSE THEIR PRESIDENT IS AN ENIGMA to a large percentage, and the another large percentage no longer trust him or anything he says. Thus the drift to worst case.
Actually what he sympathizes with may LOOK like islamist goals. But he just does NOT have the same feeling about america that most Americans do. That W does. That Truman did. That FDR did. It does not make him muslim or leaning islamist. It makes him, in my estimation a buyer of Howard Zinn's america. Where his forbears as slaves were property and those who wrote the Constitution, and revolted from England in the name of their freedom and PROPERTY were guilty of original sin. And as a nation guilty of original sin everything we touch, we do, we attempt is tainted. And no matter what he says, how he says it, or how he looks at the camera or reads his speeches, it oozes out of him like garlic the morning after a heavy dose of scampi.
And in a president, how could that be much worse?
Related articles by Zemanta
7 comments:
That's a good question.
But, I must ask you, you say you don't believe he sympathizes with Islamist goals, and yet it seems clear he sympathizes with Islamist goals in
1) the Ground Zero Mosque
2) the Palestinian territories
3) Kenya
4) the ISNA
5) CAIR
6) the Muslim Brotherhood
7) Muslim immigration to the United States
What do you have to say about that?
If all we do is tainted, and all we ally with is as well....dialectic follows
The WASP Christian values, which reached their philosophical and logical peak with the Dutch reformed church, and the rapacious character of our culture guided by these values have lead us into all these mistakes.
The mosque must be built because it helps to shatter those values.
The Pal issues derive from a colonial experiment of jews gone wrong.
Kenya is the result of the WASP values as exemplified by Churchill and colonial seizing of native assets (which is why that bust is gone... as we can see from WSC's comments about Gandi and arabs..he was a typical wasp racist)
Has Obama expressed himself on the rest?
What would Zinn have said on these subjects?
Why would he NOT sympathize with Islamist goals, at least with those which are compatible with his commitment to socialism, lessening of American sovereignty, multiculturalism, and punishment of Western Civlization? Would Muslim domination and imposition of Sharia further those goals or represent a competing and incompatible religio-political rivalry? Not being an Alinskyite Marxist I'm probably not qualified to answer. But it is a valid line of inquiry.
And there is nothing "crystal-clear" about Obama's Christianity, which is at the very least tainted with black liberation theology and nutured by 20 years of attending a racist church with a hater pastor. There is nothing speculative about that.
McCain is an idiot. Ask him if Obama is an Arab (my understanding is that his ethnic makeup is partially Arab), and you get tripe such as, "He's a decent family man and citizen that I yadda yadda yadda, that's what this campaign is all about. He's not Arab." ?!WTF%#? Are we really such fragile children now that an honest answer geared to adults, even, say -- "Are you asking if he is Muslim? He says that he is Christian and I take his word on it" -- would be too "inflammatory"?
If he is not a socialist, some eclectic christomusliberationist mix, favorably inclined towards Islam and Muslims, uncomfortable with and downright hostile towards some basic aspects of American life (capitalism, for one) then what the hell is he? At this point, it is the family-man-mainstream-Christian-moderate-liberal-naive-underexperienced academic model that has become pathetically inadequate.
We do not need conspiracy theory and we do not need hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-no-evil. We need facts and logical analysis based on those facts. Since nobody in the media or either of the political parties seems prepared to do that, looks like we'll be going through this election season half blind in the dark. Let's just hope we find the right door.
Well rra, since every factor is lined up against Obama thanks to HIS OWN ACTIONS, I say we shut up about the harder to convince stuff and let them dig their own hole as deep as they please.
Nancy Pelosi minority leader sounds nice to me
Epa,
I think we are disagreeing on semantics. You are correct in saying that Howard Zinn and Obama are in agreement, and that Obama is more clearly a Zinn-ite, than he is an Islamist.
But, my point is, the leftist goals and the Islamist goals are so closely aligned, in many ways, that it is often hard to distinguish the two ideologies and therefore, I do not think it is unreasonable for people to look at the evidence and wonder whether Obama is indeed dedicated to advancing Islamism.
I think Odama is using the muslim questions and the intentional skirting of some issues (ie birth certificate) to increase chaos within the minds of the rank and file voter. With so much going on it's difficult for voters to keep their eye on the ball and Odama and the Dems make steps toward the further socialization of the US.
I also think that many politicians worldwide think they can use islam to further their own goals as it creates a distraction. Unfortunately for them and us, this will be like attempting to tame a rattlesnake. islam will come back and bite us in the butt.
Sameno, that is a very interesting observation and I think there's a lot of truth in it. The tendency to not treat Islam as a serious political threat because of its religious trappings goes beyond our own politicians. It may well explain some of Obama's own actions if he is more an ideological socialist than he is interested in Islam, but sees the latter in support of the former and of his other plans for weakening the US and other Western nations.
Just on the demographics alone, that is playing a dangerous game.
Post a Comment