Newsweek: Republicans 'Successfully Scaring Voters Since 1968,' Obama ‘Steady, Calm, Focused Leadership’

May 11th, 2008 2:07 PM

Here is a perfect example of the sort of wild-eyed leftism that is so infused into the very souls of every journalist that claims the mantle of the fourth estate. It's also a perfect example of how they are in the tank for their messiah, Obama. Newsweek's Rich Wolffe and Evan Thomas have presented a fawning review of how Barack Obama is so cool and collected under political fire, but warns their messiah that the GOP is still filled with meanies who have been "successfully scaring voters since 1968." Of course, not a word is spoken of all the scare tactics that the Democrat Party has used since time immemorial and Wolffe and Thomas act as if their pals at the DNC are just innocents in the wilderness unfairly assaulted by those nasty Republicans.

After celebrating Obama's new, gentler politics, Newsweek gets down to brass tacks to warn Obama about those awful Republicans.

If the candidate seemed weary and peevish or a little slow to respond at times, he never lost his cool. But the real test is yet to come. The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities. The 2008 race may turn on which party will win the lower- and middle-class whites in industrial and border states--the Democrats' base from the New Deal to the 1960s, but "Reagan Democrats" in most presidential elections since then. It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as "the other"--as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.

But, let's do a little review of the "scaring voters" that the Democrat Party has been a party to. And, heck, we don't even have to go as far back as when the Democrats tried to cause fear that "miscegenation" would occur if Republicans were successful in ending slavery. Or the many decades of fear the Democrats spread with Jim Crow laws. No, we don't even have to remind everyone that the largest number of members of the KKK were Democrats – heck, the Democrats even have an ex-KKK member as a Senator in West Virginia to this very day. Just about everyone knows these things even if the modern press wants us all to forget it.

But, the Democrat Party is famous for its scare tactics. For instance, let's revisit the famous Daisy ad the Dems ran in 1964 against Barry Goldwater where the Democrats made everyone afraid that Goldwater was going to start a nuclear war if he was elected.

Or how about when Ronald Reagan proposed changes in the welfare systems during the early part of his presidency. It was claimed that he would starve school children with his plans. It was also claimed by several Democrat politicians that Republicans wanted to make our water too polluted to drink during those Reagan days. And, let us not forget when it was claimed that Reagan also wanted to start a nuclear war just as they claimed Goldwater wanted to. Remember how they called him Ronald Raygun?

We have seen Democrats over and over again try to scare the voters into voting for Democrats. They have a full litany of scare tactics. As far as Democrats are concerned, Republicans want to take away a women's "right" to abortion, take away all support systems for the needy, start wars all across the globe, take away our civil rights, keep blacks from getting ahead, deny all minorities any success, steal us all blind with unfair business tactics like Enron’s, install a religious state... well, it goes on and on.

So, for these "journalists" to act as if only the GOP is involved in "scaring voters" is an act so blind, an act so filled with partisan rancor, that it defies description. But it is certainly a common assumption by the bulk of the MSM. Remember, to most journalists Democrats are all that’s good in the world.

(photo credit: Irony Smirony)

(h/t Newsbuster reader David Henry)