For far-right Republicans, when nothing else is working in the midst of a political campaign, they always seem to go back to the same thing: the good ol’ red scare.<\/p>\n
Take Tom DeLay<\/a>, for example. The former House Majority Leader took time away from his criminal defense — DeLay is currently facing felony counts of money laundering and conspiracy in Texas — to appear on right-wing talk-show host Mike Gallagher’s radio show yesterday. When the subject turned to the presidential campaign, the former exterminator went after Barack Obama: “I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist.” Gallagher agreed, saying, “[T]hat’s what he is.”<\/p>\n GALLAGHER: Yeah, that’s, we hear that every day. Congressman, every day someone will say to me, and I’ve said it, it’s as if this were a guy who’s desperately trying to cover up what seems to be the kind of old school Marxist, radical liberal failed ideology.<\/p>\n DELAY: Absolutely.<\/p>\n GALLAGHER: That’s what he is.<\/p>\n DELAY: No doubt about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are a couple of angles to consider here. First, this is the same DeLay who, just a few months ago, lambasted John McCain<\/a> for “betraying” the conservative movement. He said he’s prepared to “sit this [election] out” if McCain won the Republican nomination, and told Fox News, “There’s nothing redeeming about John McCain.” I guess he’s come around.<\/p>\n And second, the near-constant red-baiting from high-profile Republicans has clearly pushed the GOP beyond the realm of contemporary political norms. These guys are desperate, and panic appears to have set in, but that’s hardly an excuse for a red scare. In April, after Obama made his now-infamous “bitter” remarks, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol claimed in his New York Times column that it was a reiteration of “Marx’s famous statement about religion.” Karl Rove agreed, calling the comments “almost Marxian.”<\/p>\n Perhaps worse, Obama’s Senate colleague, Joe Lieberman (I-CT), told Fox News Radio that it was “a good question” to ask if Obama is “a Marxist,” though he said he would “hesitate” to call him one himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Quite right. I’d add that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), whom no one has ever accused of being a mental giant, picked up on this recently, blasting Obama for having a “socialist agenda<\/a>.”<\/p>\n And it’s not just targeted at Obama specifically. Fox News invited an analyst on recently to argue<\/a>, \u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, CNN\u2019s Glenn Beck went on a tirade<\/a> in January, arguing that Hillary Clinton\u2019s policy agenda \u201csounds like the Soviet Union\u201d \u2014 he labeled her \u201cComrade Clinton\u201d \u2014 and said of John Edwards, \u201cNow, put a red star on his furry head. He\u2019s a communist.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s become something of a Republican fall-back position. When the 110th Congress was taking office last year, RedState created a graphic that read, \u201cDemocrat-Socialists Take Back Congress.\u201d There was a hammer and sickle<\/a> in the middle, and the background image is of the evacuation of the U.S. embassy of Saigon.<\/p>\n In 2005<\/a>, when some raised questions about the propriety of lawmakers attending retreats sponsored by corporate lobbyists, then-Rep. James Gibbons (R-Nev.) said, \u201cAnybody who is against that obviously must be a communist.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2004<\/a>, then-Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called John Kerry “a French-speaking socialist,” Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) said Kerry “advocates all kinds of additional socialism.” Around the same time, Bill O’Reilly called Paul Krugman “a quasi-socialist,” and compared<\/a> David Brock’s Media Matters to Fidel Castro’s communist regime.<\/p>\n I can appreciate the fact that Republicans probably get a little tired of calling someone a \u201cliberal,\u201d but that’s no reason to start manufacturing a red scare. I mean, really. There should be some<\/i> political norms that conservatives still care about.<\/p>\n The right gets pretty worked up when the left starts throwing around the word “fascist.” Oddly enough, though, the ease with which they talk about communism appears effortless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For far-right Republicans, when nothing else is working in the midst of a political campaign, they always seem to go back to the same thing: the good ol’ red scare. Take Tom DeLay, for example. The former House Majority Leader took time away from his criminal defense — DeLay is currently facing felony counts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nMatt at ThinkProgress noted<\/a> that the right has been engaged in quite a bit of this talk lately about the Democratic nominee.<\/p>\n