The Elephant In The Room

As Matt Welch writes in the New York Post, “It’s been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama’s health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it”:

“Racial anxiety,” guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

“Nihilism,” theorized Time’s Joe Klein.

“The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy,” historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.

While the commentariat’s condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama’s room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren’t very keen about the government barging into their lives.

And since the legacy media can’t, or won’t decipher the real reason, they fallback on a well-worn, one-size-fits-all stereotype, Jonah Goldberg adds:

Two weeks ago, town hallers were supposed to be members of the Brooks Brothers brigade, Astroturf division. Now they’re well-armed anti-government militias. At this rate, they’ll soon be android ninjas with laser vision. Wait, strike that. They’ll be really racist android ninjas with laser vision.

Suddenly, if conservatives want to transcend race, we have to agree to massive increases in the size of government and socialized medicine.

That’s not transcending race, it’s using Obama’s race to bully the opposition into acquiescence. Actually transcending race would require treating Obama like any other president. Which is pretty much exactly what conservatives have been doing. Seriously, if Hillary Clinton were president, would conservatives really be rolling over for the same health-care plan because she’s white?

Sure, racists don’t like Obama. (In less shocking news, bears continue to use our national forests as toilets.) But that doesn’t mean everyone who dislikes Obama is therefore a racist.

What’s dismaying is how the press and Democrats are so desperate to obscure this point. The only notable political violence at a town hall was against a black man, roughed up by pro-Obama toughs. The assault weapon lawfully carried to a demonstration was carried by a black man. That supposedly racist poster depicting Obama as the Joker? (An LA Weekly writer fumed, “The only thing missing is a noose.”) That was created by a Palestinian-American supporter of left-wing garden gnome Dennis Kucinich. Whoops!

Never mind. They’ll keep trying until they find a scapegoat that works, because that is what they do.

Exactly. Just ask this up and coming young community organizer:

[youtube 3c6g6ZVeQBM]

Meanwhile, flash-forward 14 years from that interview, and President Obama, furiously flailing and failing, sounds like he’s rapidly entering territory best mined by the Onion: “Peeved Obama Trumps Paterson’s Race Card.”