Obama speaks of Republicans as evil force threatening the nation

Even the centrist website Politico is condemning Obama for his polarizing rhetoric. In a piece entitled, “Obama launches cultural warfare,” Keith Koffler writes:

In September, Obama used reactions by a handful of audience members at GOP debates to indict the entire party.

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republican,” Obama said during a California fundraiser, “but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party. You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay. That’s not reflective of who we are.”

Allegations that Republicans want sick people to die and hate homosexuals are caricatures you might expect of an extreme House member or a raving partisan running for local office. That a president would say—or even believe—such things is deeply disturbing….

To the peril of the nation, the Obamas are declaring that “who the Republicans are” is something mean and pernicious.

Democracy presupposes that both sides accept that the other speaks with goodness from the heart —if sometimes in error.

But if the other side is not just wrong but ill-intentioned, the rationale for sharing power evaporates.

Class warfare is a dangerous game, unjustly turning a small segment of society into villains. But cultural warfare is poisonous, threatening to sicken and cripple the entire society.

Disclosure: I have often said that the problem with the Repubicans is that they insist in portrayng the Democrats as people of good will who share the same basic loyalties as the rest of us.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 17, 2011 08:58 AM | Send