Right wing slander of Barack Obama

I've been watching the new about all these "tea parties" and talks about Texan secession and I'm somewhat aghast. The Rabid Right, as orchestrated and popularized by Fox News, is trying to equate these childish demonstrations against President Obama as being of the same legitimacy as the Left's attacks on George W. Bush; this is to deflect criticism of these stunts, and distract from Fox News' role in promoting them.

There's a huge difference though; criticism of Bush was primarily based his actual actions. Further, these actions were not in the form of leadership under the rule of law, they were based on actively claiming new executive powers, and on lying to both the American people and to both houses of Congress ... and even to his own Secretary of State.

By contrast, President Obama is being attacked repeatedly, using demonizing terms such as "socialist", by talking heads with no true access to the President's thoughts or policies. Talk of "education camps" and gun bans are coming out of the Rabid Right's fevered and fractured sub-concious.

President Obama's actual actions have been most Presidential; convincing the country and the Congress to pass legislation to achieve the administration's goals (such as the banking system bailout), not pre-emptively claiming an Executive Branch power where none previously existed.

Fox News, Rush and the GOP would like the country to believe in a fairy tale of organic, grass-roots, spontaneous demonstrations to challenge the legitimacy of President Obama and his policies. They would like to claim public dissatisfaction with a President who was elected with a clear majority in the popular vote and an overwhelming majority in the Electoral College. The hypocrisy, of course, is that after the debacle of the 2000 election (remember, one so close that it was decided by judges, not voters) these same people called any challenge to then-President Bush unpatriotic, or even treasonous.