Right Wing Nut House

My latest is up at PJ Media where I talk about leadership and Obama’s lack thereof:

The towering personalities of those narratives were largely trapped by forces of history that, try as they might, they couldn’t bend to their will in order to alter destiny. Lincoln put it best when he said, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”

Lincoln could only ride the tsunami, not direct it. The ageless desire for freedom, the growing agitation for equality, the westward expansion of peoples and ideas, the rising shame over the sin of slavery, the greed of industrialists, the incomprehensible hypocrisy of a nation that boasted of its freedoms while keeping millions in chains, the emergence of free labor and a nascent labor movement — this and more was in the wave that Lincoln was trying to ride. He was successful only insofar as he was able to identify those things he could control, and those he could not. It was his particular genius, and you certainly can’t expect every president to be gifted with such insight.

But in Barack Obama’s case, events have gotten far the better of him. And most tellingly, he seems unable to see anything that he can control, settling for blaming his predecessor and promising to do better.

In these times, with the challenges he is facing, that simply isn’t good enough.

Obama is riding the wave without realizing he’s even on the water. And to make matters worse, he apparently can’t swim. The analogy of a “deer in headlights” seems harsh but that is a judgment of some of the Washington press corps.

[...]

His allies and apologists claim that this demonstrates the president’s “coolness.” Nice try, but that just doesn’t cut it. Coolness is telling your wife when you’re on a stretcher with a bullet an inch from your heart that you hope all the doctors are Republicans. Obama’s “coolness” appears to be an aloofness — perhaps even an arrogance — that manifests itself in the curious way in which he views “leadership.” Giving inspiring speeches is very nice (although it’s been a while since we got one of those), and feeling people’s pain is very politically correct these days.

But political leadership is more than delivering pretty words and demonstrating political empathy. It is projecting the ability — whether it is present or not — to identify a problem and make the rest of us partners in addressing it. Leadership engages those being led, makes them part of the enterprise, inspires confidence that collective action will make a difference. In short, leadership is a two-way street. You can’t lead if no one is willing to follow.

When the president speaks, it is usually to lecture, or to have his rhetoric take flight, mouthing meaningless platitudes that fail to inspire but allowing us to feel good about ourselves. “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country,” sniffed the president during his speech Monday. Does that inspire you? It seems despairingly banal to me.

In some ways, it’s frightening to consider the idea of a president in over his head. This has been pretty obvious since the stim bill when he farmed out the writing of it to radicals like Pelosi and political hacks like Reid. It is now generally believed even among the president’s supporters that it didn’t work. Of course, they say it’s because it wasn’t big enough. But the fact that a president with a near 70% approval rating couldn’t do just about anything he wanted with huge majorities in both chambers bespeaks a singular lack of leadership on what was supposed to be his administration’s primal thrust.

The bottom line is that Obama doesn’t recognize those things within his control. Events are controlling him, which is a bad place for a leader to be.

I have been remiss in publishing links to my work around the web lately. Allow me to rectify that:

My latest was published at FPM today about the planned massive demonstration today in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Protestors are angered at the slow pace of change and want the military to step aside for a civilian “transnational council” that would rule until elections were held - now put off till probably December.

On 7/12, I had another piece at FPM “Syria Embassy Attack: The Last Straw?” which gave some background on the attack on the US embassy in Damascus. Assad bused in hundreds of thugs to attack both our and the French consulate. It was in response to a visit to Hama by our ambassador to stand in solidarity with the Syrian people in their right to protest.

On 7/11, my FPM piece was on the “The Peaceful Palestinian ‘Fly-In’ Lie.” So many useful idiots - so little time to list them all.

Finally, the brand new PJ Media Lifestyles page was the venue for my short blog post on Falling Skies and why it might go all PC on us.

Enjoy. Political writing to return at any moment so stay tuned.

My latest is up at PJ Media and it looks at the doomed candidacy of Jon Huntsman in the context that his  “government friendly”  views might be his legacy, and that other pragmatic GOP  governors will benefit from his run.

A sample:

Huntsman, like many Republican governors, has gotten a reputation as an executive who gets things done by building consensus, engaging in careful negotiations, and presenting a non-ideological governing style that attracts independents and conservative Democrats. On paper, this makes Huntsman a challenger of some note. The theory is that because the Democrats are not going to primary the president, independents and dissatisfied Democrats will vote in Republican primaries in droves, thus moderating the electorate and diluting the impact of Tea Party types.

Many analysts point to New Hampshire as an example because the Granite State has an open primary where Republican party membership is not required to vote in the GOP contest. The early primary states of New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan all feature such open primaries. Might a center-right candidate build momentum with victories in those early states and move on to capture the nomination?

The reality is a little different. Most open primaries are in southern states where Huntsman’s brand of conservatism wouldn’t go over any better with Democrats than it does with the Republican base. Also, there just aren’t enough open primaries for a Republican candidate to win the nomination. Any realistic path to victory for Huntsman would include winning in closed primary states where he scores poorly against other candidates in the field, and where there is actual resentment against his candidacy from the base of the party.

Huntsman may see himself having a realistic shot at the nomination. But beyond what is shaping up to be largely a media-driven fantasy run, there is the notion that what Huntsman represents — his principles, his governing style, and his government-friendly ideas — may outlast his candidacy and herald a rise in national influence for a new breed of GOP governor.

They are chief executives who have built solid reputations for reform by gaining consensus rather than provoking confrontation. They are less the ideologues than idea men, preferring to work with the opposition when feasible and getting high marks from voters for doing so. Their bottom line is getting the job done, not playing “gotcha” games or scoring wins and losses. It may be more a matter of temperament than intelligence or skill, and they place a premium on competent management of the executive.

Some, like Mitch Daniels  and Mitt Romney, are technocrats. Others, like Scott Walker and Chris Christie, are more confrontational, but get high marks for their political skills. In the end, getting things done trumps ideology and sometimes even partisanship.

Most GOP governors ended up taking stimulus money, of which about $120 billion was earmarked for the states. It is likely that even without a stim bill, that money would have ended up in the hands of the governors anyway, due to the fiscal crisis in most state budgets. Faced with the choice of ideology or pragmatism. most chose the latter. This did not sit well with many national Republicans who hold it against those GOP governors who put the interests of their states over the the political whims of ideologues.

Huntsman may be the epitome of this new class of governor. Daniel Allott summarized the conservative case for Huntsman in Politico:

Predictably, I am getting slammed in the comments. The 25-30% of the GOP that believes competence and pragmatism are not what people want out of government serve up all the idiocies about RINO’s. They just can’t stand the fact that someone like Huntsman agrees with 90% of their agenda but is still somehow weak or squishy on the issues. He’s not loud enough, abrasive enough, and he actually wants to work with all sides to reach an agreement on legislation. What used  to be generally accepted as good governance is now treason. God help us if these jamokes ever do win the White House.

I’m not supporting Huntsman, and I definitely don’t think he has a chance of winning. He is the “anti-Romney” candidate who is hoping that the former Massachusetts governor is knocked out early to clear the way for the real battle; the hard right versus the pragmatists. But Huntsman will never make it that far. Romney will self finance and probably be in the race to the end.

I have two recent articles on the War Powers Act battle in Congress and what’s happening in Libya with NATO and the hapless rebels fighting Gaddafi.

From PJ Media on Thursday, I look at the president’s arrogance in declining to ask congress for authorization to go to war in Libya:

A bi-partisan group of House members led by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Walter Jones (R-NC) has filed suit in federal court claiming the administration is in violation of the War Powers Act. Kucinich said: “With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies”

Speaker John Boehner didn’t go that far, but still registered his disgust with the administration’s non-cooperation in explaining the U.S. mission in Libya by sending a letter to the White House on Tuesday calling on the president to “faithfully comply with the War Powers Resolution and the requests made by the House of Representatives, and that you will use your unique authority as our President to engage the American people regarding our mission in Libya.”

On June 4th, the House requested that the administration answer 21 questions in a resolution on Libya that sought clarification on the war, “including its goals and objectives, costs and justification for not seeking congressional authorization.” The measure included a deadline of 14 days for the president to respond.

In his Tuesday letter to the White House, Boehner told the president that he was out of time:

“Given the mission you have ordered to the U.S. Armed Forces with respect to Libya and the text of the War Powers Resolution, the House is left to conclude that you have made one of two determinations: either you have concluded the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the mission in Libya, or you have determined the War Powers Resolution is contrary to the Constitution,” Mr. Boehner wrote. “The House, and the American people whom we represent, deserve to know the determination you have made.”

Given the response of Mr. Koh, it would appear that the president does not believe that firing missiles from drones, manning a blockade line at sea, refueling NATO combat aircraft, and flying sorties that enforce the “no fly zone” in Libya can be defined as American forces engaging in “hostilities” — at least for the purpose of a work-around for the War Powers Act.

My second piece is published at FrontPage.com and is an update on what is going on in Libya and how the NATO alliance is reaching the end of its resources to fight the war:

The rebels’ claim of better coordination and communication is the result of them being equipped with satellite phones and more sophisticated radios — presumably gifts of “non-lethal aid” from the alliance. With much of Libya’s communications infrastructure destroyed, the phones and radios can potentially give the rebels an advantage over government forces.

Aside from humanitarian supplies and such non-lethal aid, NATO can do little to augment what the rebels can scrounge from captured government supplies, or make on their own. In fact, their own resources are being strained to near breaking. They are becoming more dependent on the United States for precision guided munitions and even their stockpile of conventional bombs is running low.

Then there is the strain on the national budgets of Britain and France. The war will cost Britain $1.5 billion by September at a time when the government of David Cameron is making large cuts in social service programs. And while the war flies largely below the media radar — and will probably continue to do so as long as there are few casualties — there is the real possibility that opposition to the conflict will manifest itself in both countries unless a victory can be achieved soon.

These strains have also affected the alliance as a whole. There is widespread agreement among both analysts and military experts within NATO that there is a crisis of resources largely because of a lack of participation in combat operations from several alliance nations that are perfectly capable of contributing but are refusing to do so. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave a withering critique of this lack of support in his speech in Brussels recently. There have also been warnings from the naval chiefs of Great Britain and France that they will not be able to sustain the same level of commitment to the operation unless the conflict can be ended before the end of the year.

As for the Boehner-Obama dust up, Obama wins hands down. There is no way the Kucinich suit has a prayer of succeeding and the speaker’s threat to cut off funding for the war is an empty one. He would need to get such a measure through the Democratic senate and have Obama sign it.

Obama will be able to go on his merry way in Libya - perhaps leading us off a cliff if, as is very possible, ground troops will have to be committed to overthrow Gaddafi. Expect the US role to grow in the coming weeks and months as Europe runs out of bombs and can’t afford to continue operations at the level they are currently being conducted.

Not that anyone would notice…

My latest is up at Pajamas Media in which I make it clear that I am unhappy with the current gaggle of “ideologues, kooks, bomb throwers, party traitors, flip-floppers, and non-entities.”

A sample:

Now don’t get me wrong. Some of the candidates have a lot on the ball. Herman Cain appears to be an immensely talented man, although why he would want to run for president is a mystery. Sarah Palin is a born politician, although why that would recommend her as chief executive, I am at a loss to say. Newt Gingrich is a very bright fellow who took a wrong turn in life 30 years ago and ended up on the hustings instead of in the classroom where people would have enjoyed his lectures rather than resent them.

There’s not much wrong with Tim Pawlenty. There’s not much right about him either. He is a colorless non-entity — a dollop of vanilla ice cream covered with vanilla frosting. If he ever wore a gray suit, he would blend in with the background. Presidential material he is not.

The Libertarian contingent of Ron Paul and Gary Johnson is the designated comedy relief for the campaign. Count on them to say something so outrageous that even ideologues in the Republican Party have to disavow it. Safe to say, they will be a non-factor except at debates where Paulbots and Johnson Zombies will try to stuff the online ballot boxes in order to give their man a “victory.”

Given the paucity of talent, experience, and ability, the GOP might do better holding a “cattle call” for candidates. They do the same thing on Broadway to cast musical comedies and it seems to work out OK for them. Send out a notice to every agent in the city or simply put an ad in Variety about an open audition and hundreds of starving actors show up with dreams of glory in their heads.

Something similar could be figured out to find a decent GOP presidential candidate. An ad in the National Enquirer ought to bring in a few hundred applicants at least.

Wanted: Candidate to Run for President on the Republican Ticket. Experience in government desirable, but not required. Ability to communicate a must. Should be sensitive to right-wing social issues, hate taxes, despise government spending, and not like Muslims very much. Establishment types need not apply.

I’m exaggerating, of course. But not by much, and not so much that there isn’t a ring of truth in my analysis. Bottom line: The GOP has 2 or 3 candidates who could be elected president. But they have no one, I believe, who could make an effective president.

My latest PJ Media column looks at the stubborn stupidity that is the Birther movement in the wake of the release of Obama’s birth certificate:

A sample:

For the true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, never-say-never birthers, the only thing that will apparently convince them of the provenance of Obama’s birth is a document that tells them exactly what they believe — that the president wasn’t born here and is therefore ineligible to hold office. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as fake or forged, or is simply ignored as not worthy of their attention.

To wit: When confronted with irrefutable proof that you have been wrong all along, concentrate on minutiae that, at least in your own mind, can keep the theory alive. Here’s a comment from Roger L. Simon’s “Teachable Moment” post on the Tatler:

A color copy, and everyone uses black ink to sign their name? 90% of pens in the world are blue.

This is an obvious forgery.

It is sad and pathetic, yes. After having gone through several hundred comments on sites ranging from Hot Air to Newsbusters, the only conclusion I can draw is the astonishing fact that not one single birther admits to error. I would hope that there are some birthers who have seen the light and are too embarrassed or depressed to comment about it. But those that took the trouble either searched valiantly for the kind of detail our friend above found, or speculated about ways the certificate of live birth could have been forged:

Witness Protection forges documents all the time. Whose [sic] to day [sic] this is not one? Same for CIA. BUT – the big question is why hide it?

The answer to that question was given by White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer:

Earlier Wednesday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the debate has been “really bad for the Republican Party.”

The so-called “birther” debate is “good politics” but “bad for the country,” said Pfeiffer.

With 75% of the country believing that President Obama was either definitely or probably born in America, and 45% of Republicans believing the opposite, the White House didn’t have to lift a finger to “prove” anything. The GOP was doing a bang-up job of making themselves look like paranoid nutcases without any help. The old political adage that states “Never get in the way of your opponent when they are self-destructing” applied here.

I urge everyone to read Richard Hofstadter’s old essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” to understand the mindset at work among the Birthers. I think most objective observers today would admit that Hofstadter allowed his partisanship to intrude far too often in his observations (later in life, he abandoned the new left and embraced conservatism as a philosophy). But much of what he writes can be applied to either the right or left fringe, which makes many of his points ring true.

When so much of one’s intellectual and emotional capital is invested in paranoid beliefs, it becomes impossible to admit error because one isn’t just admitting they are wrong about a single issue, they are admitting that their worldview is incorrect. The entire notion of  how they experience reality is challenged. Therefore, it becomes imperative to protect their beliefs, even if every piece of  objective evidence says otherwise.

With Donald Trump now leading the GOP field, it’s a good bet that other paranoid fantasies will be resurrected. I can’t believe some of the people who are cheering this irresponsible lout on. He’s more arrogant than Obama. He’s more of a narcissist, less experienced in government, and less patient and prudent. He’s got an ego the size of Mount Everest and would likely betray Republicans as often as he would hammer the Democrats.

If Trump wins the nomination even after making some of the most outrageous statements ever uttered by a serious candidate for president - that we should take Libya’s oil, for instance - then the Birthers will look downright rational next to a Republican party that had truly lost its collective mind.

You might think it ironic that a website that calls itself “Right Wing Nuthouse” would be accusing Donald Trump and his Birther crusade of enabling, well…right wing nuts.

You would be right. It is ironic, although that shouldn’t detract from my excellent article up at PJ Media this morning.

A sample:

There’s no more hiding for Republicans. The wolf is no longer at the door. He has actually been invited in for tea and crumpets and is now sitting primly in the parlor chatting amiably while he plots mayhem and destruction for the party that once stood for prudence and probity.

Now it is in danger of standing for paranoid kookiness. As responsible adults in the party wring their hands in worry and frustration, a smiling Donald Trump unleashes the crazies, bringing them into the light and showering them with respectability dust. The Hofstadter Brigade of birthers, conspiracists, racists, and born again Birchers — people who give right wing wackos a bad name — have been given permission by at least one adult to go roll around in the mud and mess themselves without having to clean up before dinner. Giving this crew their heads by joining them in their fantasies is either the most irresponsible move ever made by a serious candidate for president, or a brilliant stroke of self-promotion that will pay big dividends for Trump when all the excitement about his candidacy dies down.

I suspect the latter. Trump, for all his bluster, can’t seriously believe that the certification of live birth issued by the Obama campaign in 2008 and confirmed as authentic by the state of Hawaii is a forgery, or was planted by Communists, or was altered in some way. There is not one scintilla of evidence for any of those possibilities — at least, evidence that would be accepted by someone with more than two brain cells working.

If altered or a forgery, then a conspiracy of gigantic proportions involving many members of the government of Hawaii has been hidden from all of us, except those few who have been vouchsafed the ability to see what isn’t there. Members of the conspiracy that has aided Obama would include former Republican Governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle and former Republican Lt. Governor James Aiona. Why they would want to hide the origins of Obama’s birth can only be guessed at. Maybe they’re closet commies or something.

The fact that 41% of Republicans around the country believe this twaddle makes me want to go hide under a rock and not come out until sanity returns to the GOP. What a remarkable testament to stupidity and paranoia in politics.

Not that any birthers are lurking out there (and even if they were they wouldn’t listen), but in order to question Obama’s origins, you have to completely ignore the authenticated certificate of live birth. There’s just no way around it - unless you believe that a monstrous conspiracy involving the state of Hawaii is at work. So birthers get even more convoluted in their fantasies only by dismissing the COLB as a forgery - after the state of Hawaii authenticated it.The only place to go after that is that the COLB was “planted” by someone - a contention for which there is zero evidence and has a zero possibility of being true in the first place.

Does anyone not see the disconnect here? Richard Hofstadter explained that the reason these paranoids continue to believe nonsense can be found in their sourcing. Ask a birther to prove a contention - say, there is no embossed seal on the COLB - and they will come back with “evidence…supplied by another birther! No independent, unbiased authority. No corroborated evidence. In fact, those sources debunk the mytht of no embossed seal. Just simple minded churning of rumor, innuendo, fantasy, and outright lies all between the same group of nut cases who got their original “theories” from each other in the first place!

This is what I mean when I bemoan the fact that 40% of the GOP believing this crap disqualifies the party from leadership. Rejecting, indeed becoming hostile, to reason, logic, and the truth that is right in front of their noses should cause the American people to reject any representative of such a party - especially for president.

And Trump has made it all possible. The crazies were pretty well marginalized until Trump came along and gave them respectability. Now they have a new lease on life and are crawling out of the woodwork, happy to have a celebrity who is taken seriously in some quarters on their side of the issue.

Trump gets mad when someone says he has no chance of winning. Alright, you can’t win, Donald. As long as you continue to play with the fringe, you will be rejected by the majority of Republicans - and Americans - who find your dalliance with the paranoid right a disqualifying factor in their judgment as to whether or not you should be president.

Thank God for that.

Something a little different today. My latest is up at PJ Media and it’s pretty much of a full-throated rant against the Chicago Machine and its pretensions to democratic forms.

A sample:

I wouldn’t actually call it an “election.” That would suggest there was more than one side who would benefit by a victory.

The truth, as it usually is, was a little more prosaic: the city of Chicago chose another politician to head up the corrupt Machine that has dominated politics in the Windy City for nearly 80 years. Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel became the city’s 46th mayor and first Jewish leader. He succeeds Richard M. Daley who, together with his father Richard J. Daley, ruled the city, the county of Cook, and the state of Illinois for all but 14 of the last 55 years.

The Machine is also known as the “regular Democratic Party.” There is nothing “regular” about it. It is an obscene blight on the idea of representative government and republican principles. The 95% Democratic vote cast last night are the kind of numbers Soviet leaders used to get in their “elections.” Hugo Chavez doesn’t do as well in his rigged contests.

The fact of the matter is, Chicago is held in thrall to a one-party dictatorship as firmly ensconced in power as any banana republic dictator. The enforcement mechanism is not an army or secret police (although the Machine has been known to play rough on occasion), but rather a network of ward bosses, corrupt businessmen, the odd mobster, and those who owe their livelihood to the party in power. The uniting expedient behind the Machine is money — taxpayers’ money — that is fleeced in many ways, both old-fashioned and novel.

The current Machine replaced the fractured ethnic amalgam of rancorous factions from the 1920s that was not only corrupt, but under the thumb of brutal, murdering gangsters. At least the new Machine had the decency to keep the gangsters off of the city payroll — most of the time — while assigning them a lesser role in the city’s hierarchy. Today, “the Organization,” as the mob is called, stays quietly in the background, sticking their fingers in several legitimate pies while generally refraining from carrying out their wet work inside the city limits. Today, most Chicago gangsters die in their beds or in prison.

Once Emanuel has his hands on the levers of Machine power, he is, in effect and for all practical purposes, Mayor for Life. The Machine may not have quite the influence it once had in that the mayor will not be able to crack his whip and have 13 subservient congressmen doing the bidding of a Democratic president as Daley the Elder could claim. But when it comes to elections — local, state, or national — the Machine is supreme. A steady flow of patronage jobs, city contracts, and outright bribes maintains the loyalty of ward bosses and ward heelers alike.

It is fair to ask what are the consequences of this smothering of alternative ideas to address the challenges faced by the city? Failed schools, failed mass transit, failed crime prevention, failed economic opportunities, failed protection of neighborhoods, failed prudent use and protection of the taxpayer’s money…

Failed, failed, failed - a legacy of nearly 80 years of one party government. Citizens are cowed into submission. “Reformers” are co-opted or absorbed. The press - cynical to a pathological extreme - views the entire situation as a circus; entertainment, not a political tragedy. Reporters vie with each other to come up with the most amusing, the most shocking, the most world-weary tone to their stories and receive prizes for their abdication of media responsibility.

What saved Chicago in the past was a unique dynamism among its entrepreneur class. Starting a decent sized new business in Chicago is a minefield, requiring the services of a lawyer who can help the new business owner navigate through the labyrinthine maze of paperwork at city hall. Despite this, Chicago keeps re-inventing itself economically which has saved it from the fate suffered by Detroit and other dysfunctional cities.

But that energy is dissipating as most businesses are giving up and moving out of the city - and soon, the state - as taxes continue to skyrocket and the nuisances of activists and politicians make it near impossible to make a decent profit.

I am not given to ranting but watching the returns on Tuesday night made my blood boil. The Machine not only takes care of its own but actively seeks to keep opposing or alternative ideas from being discussed in an open electoral arena. The result is the continued steady decline of a once great city.

Democratic and Republican administrations over the years have failed to dislodge the Machine’s chokehold on democracy. In fact, the Machine could have just as easily been a Republican dominated outfit rather than the Democratic party apparatus it operates as today. Party labels are irrelevant when the democratic forms are short circuited as they are in Chicago.

It would be heartbreaking if it wasn’t so maddening.

My latest is up at PJ Media - another gangbusters article about the paranoid right and how some of their beliefs have entered the mainstream of conservative Obama critiques. This is especially true of the “Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the country” theme that is so prevalent on the right.

A sample:

One of the most confounding critiques of President Obama from the right has been the expressed belief that the president of the United States has deliberately initiated policies that he knew would injure the economy and the country. In short, Barack Obama wants to destroy America.

Several different motivations are given for this traitorous behavior. Rush Limbaugh thinks it’s because Obama wants as much of the population as possible to fall into dependency on government, thus giving Democrats a permanent majority because everyone knows poor people vote Democratic. Others believe it’s because the president is a socialist/Communist and in order to remake America, it must first be destroyed.

Darker conspiracies that combine the most paranoid parts of the birther narrative with Cold War revanchist nightmares involving a plot line ripped from the film The Manchurian Candidate (the sublime Frank Sinatra version, not the Denzel Washington turkey) provide a little comic relief to the dourness of the subject matter. Obama as the unholy offspring of Frank Davis or Malcolm X, groomed from birth by the international Communist conspiracy to become leader of the free world, programmed to remake America into a Marxist dictatorship, gives the entire proposition of Obama as Destroyer of America a slightly hysterical tinge.

Thankfully, most on the right don’t go quite that far over the cliff in positing the notion that President Obama has deliberately set out to bring America down. Still, there is a desperate paranoia at work among some conservatives if one were to take the notion seriously that this president — any president — would purposefully set the nation on a course where America’s destruction would be the end result. In order to believe that proposition, you have to also believe that the president is not just an incompetent, indecisive, empty suit in way over his head as chief executive, but that he is the personification of evil.

Conservative film critic, talk show host, and political commentator Michael Medved recently penned an article for the Wall Street Journal that attempted to address this phenomenon and place it in a realistic political context:

None of the attacks on Mr. Obama’s intentions offers an even vaguely plausible explanation of how the evil genius, once he has ruined our “strength, influence and standard of living,” hopes to get himself re-elected.

I also take conservatives to task for believing in the Cloward-Piven nonsense as well as thinking that the White House is following the Saul Alinksy playbook found in Rules for Radicals. Both critiques descend into the paranoid conspiracy level by making the claim that Obama wants to destroy America.

As you can imagine, I am getting slammed in the comments. Apparently, I am some sort of liberal Obama-lover. This points up a related issue for those conservatives who go off the reservation and think as I do; we are accused of not hating Obama enough.

We can strenuously oppose his policies, even think him personally arrogant, incompetent, narcissistic, and in over his head. That doesn’t matter to the paranoids. Unless you hate the president with every fiber of your being - and believe the absolute worst about his motives - your fealty to conservatism is openly questioned.

Is this a way to judge someone’s philosophy? If you’re a right wing fanatical hater of Obama, I guess so.

I take comfort in the fact that I am smarter, prettier, richer, and more grounded in objective reality than most of my critics.

Here I go again - delving into an issue where my position is diametrically opposed to the social cons, as well as many traditionalists in the conservative movement.

My latest blockbuster is up at Pajamas Media where I take the social cons and others to task for trying to eject the conservative gay advocacy group GOProud from CPAC and the conservative movement for their stance on gay marriage.

A sample:

It can be extremely unnerving to discover that the grounded, safe, familiar, secure cocoon in which we exist is being invaded by what appears to be radical ideas and radical people that throw our notions of what is “normal” out the window. We try to shelter our children by drawing them into the cocoon, just as our parents, and their parents before them tried to keep the outside world from intruding on our peaceful existence. It never works. Sooner or later, we discover that America has other plans. A nation that prides itself on being a revolutionary society where there is the chance for change every four years does not sit still for long. For better or worse, America is constantly in motion, and like a steamroller, flattens the past and readies the ground ahead for whatever transformation is to occur.

Beyond the front gate, there are all sorts of people we wish would just go away and not disturb us with their problems. Fifty years ago, it was African Americans being asked to be “patient” while society continued its glacial pace of progress toward granting dignity and freedom from oppression. Then it was women who were told to go back to the kitchen and shut up. The disabled were asked to keep a low profile so as not to upset our delicate sensibilities. The homeless became invisible. The mentally ill, exorcised from our consciousnesses.

And now, the turn of the gays. Do we learn nothing from history? Are we condemned to constantly retreat into our cocoons and fight like hell to try and maintain an outmoded, antiquated notion of what is “normal?” You would think that knowledge is liberating and that having discovered that homosexuality is not a disease, that genetics more than environment determines your sexual orientation, we might cautiously reach out and try and understand the unnecessary burden carried by the gay community in that they have to constantly fight for what you and I take for granted; the simple, decent, American ideal of equal rights under the law.

There is nothing “unconservative” about this, despite what some on the right are saying about GOProud and CPAC. This is especially true as it relates to the fundamental truth about gays that many opponents of gay marriage refuse to concede; that people in love — even if they are of the same sex — should not be denied the legal and social advantages gained by being married.

What is fascinating to me is that most of those who strenuously object to my position do so on “moral” grounds. That is to say, they believe that homosexuality is intrinsically immoral. Barely a majority in this survey disagree but note the huge change in attitudes since 1973 when 80% thought gay love was immoral.

This buttresses the point I try to make in the article. Very little in America is static and unchanging. As more and more gays come out of the closet to their families, their friends, their co-workers, attitudes toward gay people change. When they are seen as people - real, live, flesh and blood humans - rather than objects of fear or derision, attitudes toward their behavior and lifestyle soften. It is a long process and will be decades more before wide-spread acceptance is gained. But the question confronting us today is why isolate a group of conservatives who agree with the right on almost every single issue save gay marriage and DADT repeal? You don’t even have to accept gays as full citizens to do that, although you have to do some fancy intellectual footwork to make it happen.

It strikes me as ludicrous that conservatives would deny membership in their little club to people who agree with 90% of their agenda. The same goes for the brawl over whether libertarians can be conservatives. What an extraordinary example of tribalism that there would be objections from the likes of Mike Huckabee and Erick Erickson to libertarians having a role in the conservative movement. And it’s not just libertarians or homosexuals who these jamokes want frozen out of CPAC and other gatherings on the right. They actually want to ban their supporters as well - those who don’t mind if gays or libertarians participate.

If these “conservatives,” who don’t act or think very conservatively, don’t watch out, their next CPAC will be held in a conference room in Cody, Wyoming.