Conservatives (and some liberals) have often charged that a segment of Barack Obama’s fanbase has turned into a cult of sorts. It’s a fair charge to a certain degree. It’s also not unique to political figures—not least of which, Ronald Reagan. (Seriously, ask a conservative if they can think of a negative thing about Reagan. His liberal son, Ron, doesn’t count.)

But if liberals are guilty of creating an Obama cult, then some conservatives have responded with an Obama paranoia—a burning hatred and distrust of Obama so intense as to totally defy reason. One way this manifests itself is to repeatedly and brainlessly denounce Obama as “socialist,” even as his economic policies have been stridently anti-socialist. For example, most liberal opinion leaders thought early on that Obama’s approach to the banking issue had to include temporary nationalization of the affected banks. Obama’s proposal not only shied away from that idea (Treasury Secretary Geithner was said to be deeply wary of it), but it seemed to shift the public debate away from public ownership.

An early example of this came back in April, when President Obama approved the use of military force to get back the American hostage taken by Somali pirates. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg—hardly one who looks for excuses to support the left—caught flack from his readers and from de facto Republican party chairman Rush Limbaugh when he (gasp!) said that Obama deserved a minimal amount of credit for his handling of the situation.

More recently, Glenn Beck made the preposterous claim that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” And still stronger than ever is the “birther” movement, the people who believe the president is actually a native Kenyan. Birther-in-chief Orly Taitz appeared on the Colbert Report, and, as FactCheck.org documented, all but admitted that there’s nothing Obama can do to quell their concerns:

Colbert: What would he have to do to satisfy you and those in your movement?
Taitz: In order to be president and commander in chief, he has to be a natural born citizen. So even if he were born in Hawaii, he cannot be the president and commander in chief specifically because of his multiple citizenship.
Colbert: So there’s absolutely nothing he can do to satisfy you?
Taitz: Unless he can bring his father out of the grave and make him a citizen post-mortem.

Well, then!

Tags: Barack Obama, birther, cult, Glenn Beck

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.