Trumped-Up Hate

There’s no point wondering what Donald Trump was thinking when he dragged the “birther” dead horse back into Mitt Romney’s stable. What’s inside Trump’s head is even more ridiculous than the hair on top.
 
But here’s a question more to the point – from a friend visiting elderly relatives and subjected to days-long exposure to Fox News: “Why all this hate for Obama?”
 
Well, hating Presidents is a grand old American tradition. People in FDR’s social class couldn’t stand to say the man’s name. Ike drove Adlai’s smart snobs crazy. Johnson and Nixon were reviled; Ford, ridiculed. People openly speculated that Reagan was losing his faculties. Clinton was accused of having rivals murdered.
 
But with Obama there seems to be something – well, pardon the expression, darker.
 
It’s wrong to automatically accuse Obama’s critics and opponents of being racist. But the birther obsession is different. Those people seem to harbor some deep-seated revulsion to the President, some compulsion to believe he is somehow alien and even illegitimate. Some of them just can’t accept that America elected a black man President.
 
They’re really not worth worrying about. Generally, haters like that end up destroying themselves. Blowhards like Trump get the ridicule they deserve.
 
Here’s what matters: Does Mitt Romney have the moral courage – as John McCain did – to denounce the haters? Or will he, as he did at prep school, hide behind a pack of bullies picking on people who are “different”?
 
A vote for President, in the end, is a judgment on character. Romney’s is in the balance.
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Gary Pearce

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Trumped-Up Hate

There’s no point wondering what Donald Trump was thinking when he dragged the “birther” dead horse back into Mitt Romney’s stable. What’s inside Trump’s head is even more ridiculous than the hair on top.
 
But here’s a question more to the point – from a friend visiting elderly relatives and subjected to days-long exposure to Fox News: “Why all this hate for Obama?”
 
Well, hating Presidents is a grand old American tradition. People in FDR’s social class couldn’t stand to say the man’s name. Ike drove Adlai’s smart snobs crazy. Johnson and Nixon were reviled; Ford, ridiculed. People openly speculated that Reagan was losing his faculties. Clinton was accused of having rivals murdered.
 
But with Obama there seems to be something – well, pardon the expression, darker.
 
It’s wrong to automatically accuse Obama’s critics and opponents of being racist. But the birther obsession is different. Those people seem to harbor some deep-seated revulsion to the President, some compulsion to believe he is somehow alien and even illegitimate. Some of them just can’t accept that America elected a black man President.
 
They’re really not worth worrying about. Generally, haters like that end up destroying themselves. Blowhards like Trump get the ridicule they deserve.
 
Here’s what matters: Does Mitt Romney have the moral courage – as John McCain did – to denounce the haters? Or will he, as he did at prep school, hide behind a pack of bullies picking on people who are “different”?
 
A vote for President, in the end, is a judgment on character. Romney’s is in the balance.
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Gary Pearce

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