Did you think that the radical right had lost its proverbial marbles when it insisted that Barack Obama hadn't been born in the United States?
Were you certain that they'd finally reached a critical mass of insanity when they claimed that he wanted to create death panels in his health care reform bill?
Was it clear that things could get no wackier when Tea Party leaders insisted his back-to-school platitudes contained secret messages intended to brainwash our children into becoming socialists?
In the words of Al Jolson, you ain't heard nothing yet.
It has recently been revealed that two Republican members of Congress, along with one Republican candidate for Senate - all of them, by the way, beloved by the Tea Party movement - believe that Obama won the Jewish vote through the use of hypnosis.
I am not creative enough to make this up.
From "The Jewish Forward":
The rise to power of Barack Obama has been a vexing issue for many Republicans in the past two years. How did he ever get elected? Well, it turns out the answer is simple: by hypnotizing the Jews. Or at least that is what one group of conservative doctors thinks. The group, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which is based in Arizona, opposes Obama’s healthcare plan and is strongly against abortions. It also published an article in 2008 wondering if Obama is ‘a brilliant orator, or a hypnotist?’ The answer, according to the paper published on the group’s website, is that Obama has used in his speeches ‘covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.’ And those most affected by Obama’s covert hypnosis were Jewish voters. Or else, the paper asks, how could you explain the fact that ‘many Jews are supporting a candidate who is endorsed by Hamas, Farrakhan, Khalidi and Iran?’
Further research has yielded that members of AAPS include Rand Paul, the Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky, as well as his father, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, and another member of the House of Representatives who hails from the radical right, Paul Broun of Georgia.
"The Jewish Forward" neglected to mention that Obama's rhetoric wasn't alone in putting the Hebrew people under a hypnotic spell. As culled from some research I did in the "Louisville Courier-Journal":
The AAPS article notes that the Obama campaign logo "might just be the letter 'O,' but it also resembles a crystal ball, a favorite of hypnotists."
To be fair, it is true that 78% of the Jewish vote went to Barack Obama in 2008. Then again, it might help us gain some perspective to note that, on average, 75% of Jewish voters have supported the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1928 (which was the year when the nomination of Al Smith officially associated that party with the cosmopolitan liberalism with which Jews throughout the world have long identified). Indeed, with one exception, no Democrat has received fewer than 60% of the Jewish vote in that same eighty year period (the exception was Jimmy Carter in 1980, although he still won the Jewish vote overall). More currently, no Democrat has received fewer than 74% of the Jewish vote since 1992.
For more on the history of the Jewish vote, see: http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2009/05/history-of-jewish-vote.html
In short, while I am hardly as grounded in statistical analysis as the great minds at AAPS, I think it is fair to assume that the Jewish community's historical affinity with liberalism - and as such with America's liberal party, the Democrats - probably has a lot more to do with Obama's solid Semitic support than any Svengalian code words or covert crystal balls.
Wait a minute...
Aren't I pretty, Matt?NO! I MUST RESIST YOUR POWER!
Hope...... Change...... Hope...... Change......
OBAMA IS A KENYAN SOCIALIST! I CAN'T VOTE FOR HIM!
Yes you can...... Yes you can......
SOMEONE STOP ME BEFORE I MOBILIZE THE PROLETARIAT!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment