To anyone paying attention, the so-called Birther, or birth certificate controversy, surrounding those misguided rumors that questioned whether or not President Obama had been born in this country, was a controversy both Obama and his MSM allies loved and maliciously stoked to keep alive. For them, it was a beautiful issue that gave them a racial brush with which to tar all Republicans and, better still, it worked as the perfect distraction to keep conservatives off message and on defense. For example, NBC’s David Gregory demands Congressman Eric Cantor take a firm stand against Birthers, and when he isn’t harsh enough to please a leftist like Gregory, that becomes the only story that comes out of a full-length “Meet the Press” interview.
All part of the plan.
And for a number of years it worked, at least until Donald Trump finally slew the Birther Dragon by turning the issue into such a negative for Obama, he was forced to finally act. After the President produced the very same birth certificate the MSM had assured us he could never get, the scalded media then attempted to spin it into a win for Obama, when in reality both they and the White House had just lost a powerful weapon both were counting on to reelect Obama. Without the shiny toy of Birtherism, conservatives might actually be allowed to get their 2012 message out and the country might actually have a discussion about Obama’s dismal record.
Today, Obama’s Media’s Palace Guards are desperately searching for new methods of distraction. So desperate are they that Politico’s Ben Smith and Slate’s Dave Weigel (both former members of the infamous Journolist) now have a regular cottage industry in coming up with anti-GOP nonsense distractions (today’s journolisting provides two perfect examples). But as diligent as those two are (What Fast and Furious?), they obviously aren’t enough.
Which helps to explain this insipid nonsense:
Many Republicans, however, don’t regard government jobs as actual jobs, and are eager to see them disappear. Republican governors around the Midwest have aggressively tried to break the power of public unions while slashing their work forces, and Congressional Republicans have proposed paying for a payroll tax cut by reducing federal employment rolls by 10 percent through attrition. That’s 200,000 jobs, many of which would be filled by blacks and Hispanics and others who tend to vote Democratic, and thus are considered politically superfluous.
Believe it or not, that’s a Sunday New York Times’ editorial attempting to make the case that wanting smaller government is, yep, racist.
Does the New York Times really believe that?
Of course not. The Times’ editorial is an obvious political tactic, not a serious policy position. The Times is intentionally toying with us, hoping to make us angry and put us on defense. ‘Racist’ is the new ‘Birther.’
An editorial like this one is designed specifically with launching a thousand outraged blog posts in mind. The Times wants the right sputtering with incredulity, because when we’re angry and playing on their turf, what are we not doing? We’re not exposing Obama’s failures; we’re not exposing Fast and Furious; we’re’ not communicating our message and vision.
Over the next year, we’re going to see the Dave Weigels and Ben Smiths and New York Timeses throw around a lot of chaff. That’s what they do. It’s their specialty. Furthermore, they’re desperate and panicked, and who can blame them? How would you like to carry the unholy and immoral burden of journolisting Obama into a second term?
Though this column is violating my own advice, the point of it is to say that we must condition ourselves to ignore this chaff. No one knows better than I that that’s not an easy thing to do. The audacious stupidity and unfairness of it all works like a red cape waved in front of a bull. It’s also low-hanging fruit and entirely too easy to respond to. But no matter how right we are, when we respond to obvious lies told only to provoke a reaction and siphon our energies, we’re losing — even when we’re right.
Moreover, nothing we say or write will change anyone’s mind. Those who believe such nonsense are as hopeless as those who create it.
If we’re going to end the nightmare starring Barack Obama, we must stay on offense. There will certainly be times when fighting back is the smart tactic, but we have to be strategically intelligent and pick our shots.
The Times is being childish with editorials such as these, and if you want to get under their skin, ignore all the hard work that went into fashioning such rancid, cynical bait.
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