Question

by hilzoy

There are only ten days left until the election. How many days before the McCain campaign and/or the Republican Party compares Barack Obama to Pol Pot? Or Charlie Manson?

I mean, we've already had Hitler and Soviet Russia. Why stop there?

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

We've seen Manson. As you might recall, he was also a community organizer.

[Warren Terra]

I watched a fascinating documentary on PBS some months ago about Jim Jones, who also started as a community organizer, progressed to being something of an urban powerbroker, preached the imminence of a postracial future ... and it all winds up in a socialist dystopia with a congressman being gunned down. I think that will be the next comparison. They can use the Jonestown massacre audiotapes in their ads - now those were chilling ... maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas?

[Keith]

Pol Pot believed in "spreading the wealth around."

Pontius Pilate, Vlad the Impaler, Rasputin...all too obvious.

No, they need to compare him, in earnest seriousness, to Gary Busey, Eric Cartman, Australopithecus, Sauron, and Tinky Winky.

[K]

I'm surprised they didn't go straight for Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko. Maybe they figure the wingnut base doesn't know who they are?

Personally, I think internet rules need to be applied to the presidential campaign. The GOP Godwined themselves with the Hitler comparison. Election over.

[Mac]

I'm particularly fond of the Australopithicus option.

[Justin]

Why not go for the gold? Several months ago, people thought they were accusing Obama of being the antichrist. Why not make it explicit?

[J. Michael Neal]

I'm surprised they didn't go straight for Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko. Maybe they figure the wingnut base doesn't know who they are?

They probably don't want to go with Sese Seko, given Rick Davis' former lobbying gigs.

Then again, that connection doesn't make the analogy any more ridiculous than it would be, anyway.

[Hartmut]

Apart from Manson there are some other serial killers. Could be combined with the Obama murder list (the one that iirc included several Clinton murder victims and some people not even dead yet).

[frank]

I'll take a shot at the comparison:

Barrack is a Pol who smoked pot.

[frank]

Forget Mobutu. Barrack is actually more like Mugabe: take the means of production from the rich (mostly white) producers and give it to the poor. What was the result? Production stopped. Zimbabwe which was once prosperous is a wreck.

[Warren Terra]

Frank, don't look now, but I think your white sheet is showing.

[frank]

I thought the Manson connection would be harder but it is not. (Isn't google amazing?!)

Barrack can be connected to Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. She was quoted as admiring Manson.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09

[Warren Terra]

Gee, Frank, and McCain was in an actual Hollywood movie, so I bet he's got a really low Bacon Number. And McCain was good buddies with Pinochet, who actually tortured and killed folks. Not to mention the board McCain served on in the 80's with all those neoNazi connections (and without disclosing his board membership - a violation of disclosure rules). But it's good to hear that Obama knew someone who knew someone who decades earlier said something monmentallyy offensive and dumb as part of their generally execrable life choices at the time.

[frank]

Gees Warren, lighten up! It seemed to me the post was begging for ridiculous associations to be made.

[Jesurgislac]

Mike: We've seen Manson. As you might recall, he was also a community organizer.

Yeah, but properly speaking I think we have to count only comparisons by people who are actually working for McCain/Palin, not people who just show up at their riots, I mean rallies.

[Zarquon]

What could be worse than being compared to Tony Blair?

[russell]

Obama == Nosferatu.

They both have big ears.

Thanks -

[russell]

Barrack can be connected to Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. She was quoted as admiring Manson.

Charles Manson in three! Well played, frank.

McCain, of course, is buddies with G Gordon Liddy, who has been quoted as admiring Hitler.

That's Hitler in two. I win.

Stupid game, isn't it?

Thanks -

[The Modesto Kid]

They can use the Jonestown massacre audiotapes in their ads

I was actually a little surprised the GOP didn't follow up in this fashion when at the third debate, Obama named (a different) Jim Jones as one of his associates.

[aimai]

I thought linking Obama to Odinga was a way of simultaneously linking him to Mobutu, Idi Amin, and pretty much every eeeeeeeeeeeeevil african leader. The republicans would link him to Mandela if history hadn't caught up to them--they always thought he was a terrorist.

aimai

[Jvstin]

@Warren Terra.

McCain has a Bacon number of 2:

John McCain (I)
was in
Wedding Crashers (2005)
with
Kathryn Joosten
was in
Rails & Ties (2007)
with
Kevin Bacon

[Jack]

Fifty four years ago, another Joe - Joe McCarthy, was hell bent to route out communism, destroying many innocents in the process. The question to him, in the midst of those hearings, rings true today, and should be asked of John McCain on where he has taken his campaign. "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

[morzer]

http://sonoranalliance.com/?p=2064

Try the entry for February 17th, 2008, at 1.50 am. I think he has most of the comparisons you require.

[Gary Farber]

"Gees Warren, lighten up! It seemed to me the post was begging for ridiculous associations to be made."

It's hard to keep track of the personality of any of the half-dozen or so "frank"s who have posted here; we have no idea which one you are; you might try a less generic handle, and that might help some.

[Jay C]

It seemed to me the post was begging for ridiculous associations to be made."

Wait, isn't that what we have National Review Online for?

[Joel Rosenbaum]

Obama -- Skeletor.

Which makes McCain He-Man and Palin She-Ra.

Case closed.

[avedis]

"After participating in the waste of tax payer $s with the destruction of a US military jet, John McCain spent years palling around with communist enemies of the United States. He had a chance to return to America, but instead he opted to stay on with his Communist North Vietnamese buddies and make statements against this country (play McCain war crimes confession)".

This is really low, but is it so much lower than the Republican anti-Max Clelland or Swift Boat campaign tactics?

I actually think we'd hear this out of Palin if Obama had McCain's history.

[chrisanthemama]

Via James Wolcott's blog:

"Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone’s genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way."
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13507

Completely, barking mad.

[javelina]

This really remarkable and unhinged piece by Mark R. Levin over at the Corner manages to shoehorn National Socialism, Marxism, and by implication any number of charismatic evil cult/political leaders into the case the writer is attempting to build against an Obama presidency.

My husband - to whom I read it aloud the minute he was awake this a.m. - was just as gobsmacked as I was. How do you not only come up with this amount of wrongheaded paranoia, but also decide to share it with the world?

I am puzzled by this reference: "Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them."

Huh? Can anyone explain? What on earth is he on about?

[javelina]

Oops - I now realize the the entry directly above this one is in fact about the very Mark Levin article I just wrote about. In the immortal words of Emily Litella, never mind :)

But if anyone wants to enlighten me about the teens in camouflage, I'm all ears.

[Gary Farber]

"Completely, barking mad."

From the link that Jeff Goldstein quotes: "I fervently believe, however, that not one person to hold that office [president of the U.S.] has ever hated his opposition."

Which is amazing nonsense. Just to start off with: Andrew Jackson. But, for that matter, jeebus, what the hell does Kim Crawford think was up with John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts? I could go on, and not even get to the absurd notion that Barack Obama is all about "hate," but the absurd lack of knowledge of simple American history we start with is enough to make me snort and not bother.

It's not a matter of Democrat/Republican, either: Woodrow Wilson had plenty of hate for his opponents, for instance. Ditto Lyndon Baines Johnson, as well as, for god's sake, Richard Nixon. Noooo, these guys never engaged in hate!

Dimwits.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

My husband - to whom I read it aloud the minute he was awake this a.m.

Good for you for having a sharp eye and a sharp mind and caring deeply about our political system, but I hope you don't mind my saying that personally I can think of at least 50 other ways I'd rather be woken up in the morning, than by that.

Of course if your husband has a special fondness for hearing unhinged right wing rants as a bracing way to start the day, then by all means carry on.

:->

[hilzoy]

javelina: I think it's a reference to a school? program? in which kids were saying things like "I will be a teacher!" or "I will be a lawyer!" after saying something about Obama. It looked like some sort of morale-building exercise. There's a video around somewhere. Needless to say, it was not connected with the campaign in any way.

[hilzoy]

Oh goody: I can tick off Visigoths.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Oh goody: I can tick off Visigoths.

Well you have to admit, this does sound pretty frightening. Children may be scarred for life. Not the mimes! Nooooooooo!

[Warren Terra]

Good heavens, hilzoy, did you actually read the post you linked?

Some choice bits:

Left-winger Andrew Sullivan .... I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left's decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse.

Yup, you read it here first: Andrew Sullivan, until recently hated by Democrats and still not fully trusted, the man who endorsed George W Bush In The New Republic during the Florida recount, the man who accused liberal elites of treason in the wake of 9/11, the man who wrote a book about his hopes for the future of conservatism - raging leftist.

Barack Obama can't be blamed for all of his followers' vile actions, but, like it or not, he trails in his wake a howling mob of barbarians.

In fairness, I trust a follower of Sarah Palin to be an expert on this sort of question.

[Hartmut]

I have watched several Obama speeches by now. If he wanted to, he could be an extremly effective demagogue but I see as of yet no sign that he has any intention in that direction. There is some pandering now in his speeches but it is clearly within the limits of normalcy. Palin on the other hand...