15 seconds of Sean Hannity is enough to tell me where the Republican National Party is and what line it is pushing.  So with that, and with a dot and dash on the Internet, I know what you probably know too — Barack Obama is, as the polls show, the most partisanally polarizing president EVER.  It is the affect of pushing such a RADICAL agenda with NO INPUT from the Republicans — evidenced by the lack of votes the Republicans provide for his agenda.

Well, the reason the poll shows a wider discreprency between Republicans and Democrats on Obama than, say, Bush is pretty darned obvious.  Take it away, Chuck Todd.:

And then the other thing that Republicans ought to be aware of when they’re making these charges, is that the pool of Republicans has gotten smaller, and so sure, the most conservative part of the party is still identifying themselves as Republicans, and absolutely, three out of four disapprove of the President’s job. But there are a lot of former Republicans sitting in that independent category now, Nora, and a majority of independents do approve of the President’s job. So it is a, it’s one of these things that Republicans ought to be careful about how they’re writing it because it’s not, it’s not the best news. It’s a smaller group of Republicans that are identifying themselves that way and when you’re getting shellacked in the middle like that, it doesn’t matter what the ends look like. The middle is what decides these elections and right now we’re seeing the President, he had big numbers with the middle during the election and he still has big numbers with them now.

The Republicans might also want to avoid tagging Obama as “Socialist”, though in that regard our “Republican Crazy Uncle of the Week” has skipped past Obama to some of his fellow congress critters.:

But he said he is worried that he is being steered too far by the Congress: “Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists.”

Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.

Seventeen is an awfully specific number.  But the problem here — and while you can’t refer to anything much that’s going on as Socialism, is that as this label is being bandied about, its corrosive effect is falling apart.  Take Obama’s strongest approval-getter, the under-30 set, for instance:

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

It’s a pretty lame Proleteriat Uprising, all things considered, but then again it’s a pretty lame “Depression”, all things considered.

The effect of the Republican Rumpus at the moment can be seen in a false equivalency — say, from a transcript of an MSNBC program where the liberal side argues that the rhetoric of a Glen Beck helped affect that recent shooting, and the “Second Amendment Foundation” spokesman argured thusly:

GOTTLIEB: Well, let`s put it this way. It pales in significance compared to the vitriol aimed at President Bush by Obama and his supporters. […]

If you look at the recent Pew research poll put out on polarization, Barack Obama is the most polarizing president that we have had for four decades.

And on Beck’s Nazi imagery.:
GOTTLIEB: I agree it minimizes it. It`s just like Barack Obama supporters minimized a lot of things by claiming we`re becoming a police state under George Bush, the same rhetoric they used, the same kind of imagery they used. The bottom line is this doesn`t help at all. But when it comes right out of the White House, with programs, policies, economic things that scare the hell out of the American people — you know, in politics, every reaction has an opposite and equal reaction. You are seeing the reaction to what the Obama administration is doing.

I can find you the “Bush is Nazi” stuff, and I can also point to any number of clamorings from the Sean Hannitys of fairly innocuous rhetoric that were claimed as beyond the pale.  (And I can point to a “Sarah Palin CUN# shirt.)  In the regard of Obama’s rhetoric — I don’t know which election campaign he just watched:  this was all a lot of happy gibberish, and promising of ponies, and floating of Hope — wasn’t it?

So, as the March of Socialism continues, and even as Democrats cannibalize themselves a tad,  here’s what the Republicans have going for them.  An astro-turf crusade of “Tea-bagging.”    Good luck with that one.  AND… they also have a full fronted you-tube attempt, where Republican Congress-critters are to heckle (in otherwise bug) the most vulnerable and targetted Democratic Congress-critters when they deliver their CSPAN speeches, and another forced attempt by the Republican followers on Democratic campaigns of asserting themselves to force perhaps a “George Allen Macaca Moment.”  Well, it’s a strategy, I’ll give them that.

Spencer Bachus

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