The Sunshine Empire

Barack Obama has spent a relatively short time on the national stage. Prior to his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention many in his Illinois senate district may not have even recognized him. Yet now he is the undisputed rock star of politics, and this has made him the target of the conservative echo chamber. While having a discussion with one of my most trusted conservative advisers the issue of Rev. Wright’s incendiary comment would not go away. I’ve written in the past how curious it is that conservatives demand that he disavow what Wright said, but then essentially state that they don’t believe it when he does. One would wonder about someone who demands such a thing when one does not believe it when it comes.

Yet when the presumptive Republican nominee’s own curious connections to extreme right wing bigoted pastors comes up, such as John Hagee’s depiction of the Catholic Church as “The Great Whore” it is cast aside on the basis that they don’t really know each other and McCain never attended their church. Not knowing someone makes the endorsement clean in their eyes. The political math is hard to estimate. Yet even by that strenuous guideline, paragons of the conservative movement can be indicted as bigots. Take for example anti-semite Ronald Reagan.

The reader may ask how exactly our senile grandfather President could be a Jew hating bigot? It’s as simple as how we’ve come to know that Senator Obama is a secret militant black panther Muslim planning to enslave us. His spiritual mentor said so so that means he believed it. According to the tapes from Richard Nixon’s White House taping system the Reverend Billy Grahm had this exchange with tricky Dick regarding Jews in America,

BG: This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.

RN: You believe that?

BG: Yes, sir.

RN: Oh, boy. So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.

BG: No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.

Thank you to Slate.com for that.

Now Billy Graham associated with many Presidents of both parties, but here is what he had to say on the occasion of Reagan’s death,

“Ronald Reagan was one of my closest personal friends for many years. Ruth and I spent a number of nights at the White House and had hundreds of hours of conversation with the President and First Lady”

Now we can understand what a racist Ronald Reagan was. All we needed was the same methodology that the right used with Obama and Wright.