Somebody named Reince Priebus probably ought to be a bit careful what names they call someone else. Being chairman of the Republican National Committee, though, he probably couldn’t help it.
Still, comparing the President of the United States to a ship’s captain who not only managed to sink his own ship, causing the death of 17 passengers (and counting) and then abandoned his ship, crew and passengers is probably a bit over the top. Even for a Republican.
Whatever else they are, Republicans are rude.
We shouldn’t be surprised. The R’s have been calling names since, well, since there have been R’s. They called their own first President “the original gorilla”. Through the Red Scare of the Twenties and McCarthyism of the Fifties, right down to the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, the R’s have given us such memorable insults as “Red”, “Pinko”, “fellow traveler” and the rest. In fact, if the R’s aren’t insulting you it probably means you aren’t worth insulting.
Still, the vitriol heaped on this President by the R’s and their right wing cohorts surpasses anything the R’s of the past could begin even to imagine. And it began on day one, even before the election, when Republican supporters attended Obama rallies carrying guns. The wing nuts among the R’s question the President’s birth and his religion and are disavowed by mainstream R’s only with a wink and a nod. The Nazi and Hitler assaults began early on as did the thinly disguise racist comments. Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp President” is only the latest and most distasteful of them.
Now we have a Republican wing nut governor who feels comfortable shaking her finger in the President’s face. And the chairman of the RNC feels no compunction about comparing the President to an incompetent, cowardly, and, possibly, murderous ship’s captain.
When does disrespect for the President become disrespect for the Presidency?
One fears that the Republicans are no longer simply rude. They are, despite their most fervent protest, racists. They are racists of the worst stripe as they insist they are simply presenting facts. Sixty years ago it was a “fact” that black men didn’t have the mental capacity to fly airplanes in combat. The Tuskegee Airmen gloriously proved that “fact” wrong. As have all their other “facts” on race been proved wrong over the years.
The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States was a watershed moment in the history of this country. It is a shame that the Republicans have responded to that moment by sinking into a pool of their own vicious and racist bile.
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