Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), whom no one has ever accused of being a mental giant, picked up on a familiar right-wing theme the other day while touting John McCain’s campaign.
“There’s a point in time where money is not what matters, ideas are what matters,” Perry said, speaking after a McCain event near Austin. “And I think that’s the big difference — [examining] John McCain and what he believes in versus Obama and his socialist agenda will be a very eye-opening moment for Americans.”
There’s that word again: “socialist.”
We’ve been heard red-scare rhetoric being tossed around with increasing ease in conservative circles lately. Fox News invited an analyst on recently to argue, “What worries me about the Democrats is that if you listen to them, their message is so explicitly socialist. I mean, at every opportunity they seem to have this contempt for capitalism.”
Similarly, CNN’s Glenn Beck went on a tirade in January, arguing that Hillary Clinton’s policy agenda “sounds like the Soviet Union” — he labeled her “Comrade Clinton” — and said of John Edwards, “Now, put a red star on his furry head. He’s a communist.”
Evan Smith, noting Rick Perry’s remarks, looked forward to the day when “some unauthorized idiot surrogate of Obama’s calls McCain a ‘fascist’ and there are calls to denounce, reject, etc.”
I’ve actually been wondering about this for a while.
You’ll notice, of course, that Perry equated Obama’s policies with a “socialist agenda,” and no one even raised an eyebrow. McCain didn’t distance himself from the comments, Obama didn’t respond, and reporters didn’t highlight the comments. The governor of one of the nation’s largest states engaged in subtle red-baiting, and it was considered so routine, no one, anywhere, cared at all.
I’m curious, though, what would happen if a Democratic governor of a large state publicly speculated about the difference between Obama and what he believes versus McCain and his agenda of “fascism.”
To be absolutely clear, I’m not accusing McCain of fascism, and I don’t think McCain is a fascist. My point is that it seems to be perfectly acceptable for the right to throw around charges of “communism” and “socialism” when it comes to leading Democratic presidential candidates, but the political world would probably be thrown into quite a tizzy if the left were to use “fascism” with equal ease. Why is that?
This has come up before. In 2004, Trent Lott, a sitting U.S. senator at the time, told an audience that John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist.” If a sitting Democratic senator had called Bush a “barely-literate fascist,” would conservatives and the mainstream media have just yawned and dismissed it as politics-as-usual? Probably not — it would have been seen as Democrats running a campaign based on “anger” and “bitterness” — and yet, Lott’s attack was a total non-story.
I don’t have a real point here, but I am curious how we reached this point. Why is “socialist” considered a routine criticism in our discourse, but “fascist” is considered beyond the pale?