Intergalactic Chess? How Obama has forced the Repubs to the wacky right...

[Bonobo]

The much maligned Glenn Greenwald makes the quite accurate case that Obama has made things very difficult for the Republican Party because he has taken away many of their core issues such as being strong on the War against Terror and the War against Drugs.

However, the core question remains. In an effort to "take away issues" from the Republicans, have we adopted so much of their thinking, their mindset and their policies that we are no longer ourselves.

Earlier on DU, I read an OP suggesting with faux sarcasm that no one should criticize the Commander in-Chief while we are at war. That exemplifies the larger issue and this essential question.

"But how can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor's once-controversial terrorism polices.

In sum, how do you demonise Obama as a terrorist-loving secret Muslim intent on empowering US enemies when he has adopted, and in some cases extended, what was rightwing orthodoxy for the last decade? The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd."

[rhett o rick]

1. Pres Obama has moved the Democratic party to the right absorbing many

conservative ex-republicons. This has been an effective strategy and pushed the republicon party to the right. The bad news is now the Democratic Party is conservative.

[Skinner]

2. Uh, nobody is "forcing" these clowns to the right.

They are sprinting that direction entirely on their own.

[Bonobo]

3. Perhaps and perhaps not.

I can certainly see why it would be hard to claim ground on the middle right that has already been staked out and marked by the POTUS.

But it sounds like my OP hit home.

[FarLeftFist]

8. Oddly enough Obama is the most progressive President we've had in at least a generation.

Worst case scenario he's a moderate. But no one is forcing the GOP into the looney bin except maybe their looney bin base and constituents.

[HillWilliam]

7. One would hope

they'd fall off the edge of their flat earth and disappear.

[edgineered]

4. In an area jam packed with RW wackos

it is difficult to imagine, yet possible in tomorrows State of the Union address, that Obama's many accomplishments are aired. Most of the locals here worship faux and their ilk, and have their mistaken beliefs.

Obama could very easily rebuke myths on economy, jobs,his record, etc. We know these things.

Introducing facts, logic, reasoning or fairness to a rethug only sets off bells in their head and up go the mental blocks. "... and why are the democrats always name calling?", is a frequently heard response.

[one_voice]

5. Oh ffs....

Now Obama is to blame for the whacky right? Jesus Christ.

Is this considered 'constructive criticism'?

Not to me it isn't. Criticizing him for not starting with single payer health, ok that's a valid point. The stimulus wasn't big enough..valid point.

The right is nutty and it's Obama's fault...flat out bullshit!

[MadHound]

6. Ah yes, and we're the ones getting played

However these moves of Obama's are but the current culmination of a larger plan that has moved the body politic as a whole further to the right. Why, you ask. Just follow the money.

Obama, Clinton, Carter, LBJ, these have all been been Democrats who moved the game to the right, interspersed with reactionary RW presidents just to make the Democrats look good. It is how the game has been played for decades now, give the people only the choice between the lesser of two evils.

[ProSense]

9. Obama

started the tea party.

[joshcryer]

10. No the Democrats haven't.

The Democrats have moved, unabashedly, to the left, from the Democrats of the 90s and the Democrats during Bush's years. With the ouster of the Blue Dogs the Democrats have not been more progressive as a representation at the congressional level.

[MadHound]

11. Sure they have,

That's why they gifted the insurance industry with a mandated monopoly, continued the Bush tax cuts, cut taxes to the lowest rate in sixty years, kept the MIC well fed and cared for, and continued the stripping of our civil liberties, among other "liberal" maneuvers in the dark.

[joshcryer]

12. Mandates are progressive, Bush tax cuts were extorted, MIC is American-pandering...

...erosion of civil liberties was the right wing congress, where 50% of the Democrats in the House voted no.

You get the representatives you deserve.

[Bonobo]

13. Battered woman syndrome

"I deserved it."

[joshcryer]

14. People making faux observations that they moved the Republicans to the right...

...certainly deserve them.

I for one kept Colorado blue and we kept the army base from being expanded.

[emulatorloo]

16. Your script is getting old.

You need to freshen the hyperbole and remove some of the stale jargon.

[CakeGrrl]

15. Their own pathological hatred of the President has pushed them into the Crazy Zone.

If the GOP were moderate and not chock full of racists, they wouldn't have to contort themselves to oppose the President - and some of their own previously held positions.

[emulatorloo]

17. Dick Cheney said we poor Dems ought to dump Obama for Hillary in 2012

Every word out of Dick Cheney's mouth is a lie. Everything he says about Dems is to stir the fucking pot.

I find it preposterous that you would try to base an argument on the words of such a liar.