Although it is true that Barack Obama's full name is indeed "Barack Hussein Obama" (see Wikipedia), there is no doubt that this is a pejorative attack intended to play on the fears of Americans. Lurking behind this dirty faith-based fear and smear is the unstated fact that Americans are utterly terrified of electing anyone close to a Muslim. In short, these attacks use the age-old tactic of guilt by association. There is no doubt that these fear and smear attacks will only intensify as this election progresses.
The power of these attacks will only become clearer as time progresses. Nonetheless, I was quite surprised to see how widespread this pejorative, guilt by association, fear, and smear attack already is:
- January 3, 2008 - CNN - Bill Bennett (more)
- January 16, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh (more)
- January 3, 2008 - MSNBC - Chris Matthews (more)
- January 6, 2008 - Bill Cunningham (more)
2 comments:
I tried Google's blog search, which results in over 12,000 hits for "Barack Hussein Obama." 166 were in the last day.
I looked through the Google blog search for "Barack Hussein Obama" a few moments ago and, as you say, there is an explosion of activity.
While I do not think this will make much difference in the democratic primary, if Obama is the nominee, we can be certain that 527s and other organizations not directly affiliated with the republican nominee will run a smear campaign.
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