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Counting Unhatched Chickens

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The daily barrage of attacks against President Barack Obama is designed to achieve two things only: one, to make him a one-term president in the long term, and to win the November 2010 mid-term elections in the short term. To achieve both goals they intend to make governing America near impossible for the 44th president of the United States. Republicans have now embarked on the most sustained, vicious and scurrilous campaign against a president of the United States in recent history.

The strategy is simple: stoke the fires of discontent born of a crippling recession that carried with it huge job loss, hopelessness, uncertainty and unemployment, and rally as many anti-Obama haters as possible by throwing them a daily ration of putrid red meat. Fringe lunatic organizations like the Tea Party and Birther Movements in bed with the right wing media establishment are the engines of this manufactured hate that the Republicans believe will translate into enough voter discontent, confusion and anger that Democrats will lose in November and carry over to Obama losing the presidency in 2012.

Already Republicans are counting their political chickens way before they are hatched buoyed by the angry, hate-filled rhetoric from the ultra-conservative Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and helped by likeminded websites, blogs and talk radio. With near 100 percent control of the media and very little by way of Democratic counter measures Republicans are getting their message out as they smear and demean America's first Black president. Their message is that the Obama Administration is incompetent, soft on national security as evidenced by the almost terror attacks in New York City and the 2009 Christmas Day failed attack on an airplane.

Today's America is divided along racial and political lines like never before. Sore Republicans angry at the loss of political power have resorted to calling the president "a liar," "a rughead," "Hitler," "socialist" and many other derogatory names. And with modern Internet technology these messages of hate are now spread far and wide. For example, an Obama hate page on the popular social media website Facebook drew over one million people who "wished Obama dead." Republican elements have long prayed for Obama to fail.

On the search engine, Google, all one has to do is type "Obama worst president ever" and there are over 3 million results. For Obama haters this is the kind of news that makes them do an involuntary political orgasm. For them this is ample vindication that Barack Obama is an easy political target whose administration they simply have to wait out to change since America will recover from its political stupor and momentary lapse in judgment by electing a white male to the White House in 2012 as "history, tradition and entitlement ordained it."

But while chicken counting is going on at an accelerated pace the unhatched political eggs may just end up being stillborn. The historical fact is that it could not have been a worse time for Obama to become president. But depending on how you look at it Obama's presidency has exposed and laid bare the hypocrisy of white America and its lofty talk about turning the corner on racism. If anything, his presidency has demonstrated that white racism; xenophobia and old segregationist bigotry of the 1950s and 60s are alive and very well today. So in this charged racial and political climate America's first Black president is an easy scapegoat.

When Wall Street bankers screw up and help make one of the worst global recession in history and ordinary Americans who are losing their jobs, houses, health insurance, and who see no end in sight to their financial suffering, who do they blame? The president. When British Petroleum (BP) more interested in making mega-profits than in personal worker safety take risky short cuts and literally pay rig inspectors to look the other way, cause the worst environmental disaster in American history, who do you blame? The president.

And when American servicemen die in two wars that President Obama did not start, who do you blame? The president. But the sad thing is that while other white American presidents had people around him to defend them in similar circumstances this president stands virtually alone. The progressives are angry with him for the slow pace of immigration reform and his gingerly tiptoe approach to gay issues. The left and center left are griping about his healthcare law that did not include a public option. And the college student base that worked so hard to get him elected in 2008 does not have an issue to wrap their hands around now that the election is over. They have drifted away and settled into old voter apathy mode.

But Obama and the Democrats may still have the last laugh. I certainly would not write the young president off not yet. And as for the Republican Party and its vicious mongrel spawn they are all mouth and no teeth. All bark and no bite. They are a bunch of cowardly girlie men masquerading as righteous patriotic Americans. This is evidenced by the fact that the name-calling, attacks on the president's family and the personal attacks against him borders on lunacy and is significant in that they are not attacking his policies in any sustained way.

And as the president continues to smile at the attacks, sometimes mockingly, as he refuses to engage and answer loonies like Sarah Palin, this has only served to send the babbling conservative elements into stratospheric ballistic mode getting more nuclear each and every day. So all that the Democrats have to do is egg them on and sure enough they are going to trip up. Honest Americans will see their true nature and catch on to their sinister agenda. Mark my words, that's going to happen long before the November mid-term elections.

President Obama has admirably stuck to his agenda and has delivered most of what he's promised during his campaign with few exceptions here and there, and a few tweaks added in for good measure. He has dad to compromise because that's what politics is all about. He's repeatedly stated that the worst has passed and the best days are still ahead. That's the kind of message of hope that Americans want to hear. He has taken the hard decisions and he's rolled with the punches. He's remained focused and engaged in both Domestic and foreign affairs. That is leadership and Americans, I am convinced, will look at his record and give him high marks after the Republican poisonings have been found to be ineffective.

For the November mid-term elections President Obama and the Democrats have to remind America that we have left the jingoistic, high-handed, one-sided foreign policy that was based on the now discredited neoconservative Policy For A New American Century (PNAC) that got us into two wars and stoked the ire of the world. President Obama has hit the reset button and has repaired America's international image much to the chagrin of the Republican right wing.

For example, his decision to scold Israel over its recent irregular activities in international waters and its three year old blockade of the Gaza Strip has only drew more angry rhetoric from the anti-Obama amen corner. But if we step back and take a sober look criticizing a friend when that friend does something wrong is what a true friend does. Going with the flow and simply turning away when that friend errs is cowardice and hypocrisy. For too long America's dealing with its friends and allies have reeked of serious double standards and immaturity when it came to Israel.

To sum up: Republicans should not engage in such early chicken counting when the eggs are not yet hatched. In politics that's stupidity born of arrogance and delusion. The president and the Democrats must get the message out that we've turned a corner and all the chatter they are hearing is from a small but vocal hate-group that wants power back at all costs. I don't believe the American people are that gullible. I can hope, can't I?

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MICHAEL DERK ROBERTS Small Business Consultant, Editor, and Social Media & Communications Expert, New York Over the past 20 years I've been a top SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTANT and POLITICAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST in Brooklyn, New York, running (more...)
 

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