Fear of a Black President

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared on NBC's "Meet The Press" yesterday to discuss the case for a Republican Congress with David Gregory and never got around to it because, when he was not defending the Bush tax cuts that have crippled the economy for nearly a decade, he allowed charges that President Obama might be a closet Muslim go unanswered. He will only take that President "at his word" that he's a Christian - as if the stated religious affiliation of your Commander-in-Chief is a matter of trust - but he won't do anything to dissuade Republican rank-and-file accusations that Obama is a Muslim.

Republicans have stoked fear of Obama because of his race and his Kenyan origins, and many refuse to believe he was even born here. McConnell, having resigned himself to the Tea Party's strength (Rand Paul defeated a McConnell-backed candidate in Kentucky's U.S. Senate primary this past spring), has no desire to stop the misconception among the voters of Obama's legitimacy, choosing instead not to cool the volcano of toxic bigotry whose steam is rising to the surface and powering the anti-Democratic backlash. IF it produces a Republican victory in the midterms, the GOP won't have to worry about articulating an agenda, which even Newt Gingrich did when he made the case for a Republican Congress in 1994. They'll just keep screwing the same middle class that voted for them. And the only reason the middle class will vote Republican is because of the desire to have that foreign-born black Muslim from Chicago - wait, black, Muslim, Chicago? Does he know Farrakhan or something? - and his socialist agenda reined in.

The only thing accurate about that last sentence is that Obama is a black Chicagoan.

And by the way, the last time Obama's opponents accepted the idea that he is a Christian was when he was associated with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Funny how perceptions of the President's faith shift with political opportunities.