mheslep said:
Who do you have in mind when you say 'right wing soothsayers'? Some guy in a Montana cabin?
No, I'm talking mostly about folks at Fox and talk radio. Not sure where they live, but surely you've heard plenty of their projections from around the election time. I don't have cable and still came across dozens of predictions of Obama's plans to turn the US into a socialist/communist (and/or nazi) state.
Some examples from a hurried attempt at Googling year-old stuff (Note: Some quotes, especially those from Fox, are uncited because I found them at various blogs, and do not have original transcripts. A careful search for the text in quotes might provide transcripts, but I'm skipping that out of laziness, and because the point below is simply to provide a flavor of the kind of right-wing rhetoric that was prevalent in 2008-2009.):
1. Brenda Buttner, Fox News host, May 2008:
"Now, isn't Obama the guy who wants to yank our troops from Iraq? My next guest says surrendering isn't exactly completing their work."
2. Glenn Beck & Mark Vadum, June 2009, talking about ACORN and related matters:
Beck:
"Barack Obama, we’ve never known who he is, right? He’s, he’s, he’s FDR, he’s JFK, he’s Lincoln. No, he’s not. No, he’s not. He’s a community organizer. There are new acorns on the tree! My theory is that Barack Obama is building a country, almost software, it’s like the Matrix. It’s running on top of the software of the Constitution or the Republic that we have. He’s got a new framework. There’s a new skeleton being built slowly but surely - and invisibly!”
Vadum:
“It’s a new, radical, left-wing political infrastructure. And so by creating these structures and funding them with tax dollars... you create a loyal army of followers. It’s also happens to be the Chicago way of graft and corruption."
Beck:
“In the 1960’s, the idea was to create a structure... then collapse the economy of the United States, so that structure would be in place. 1960’s theory.”
Vadum:
“This is not some wild-eyed conspiracy theory.”
3. Glenn Beck, April 2009:
"Because he [Obama] will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax you gun or take your gun away one way or another."
4. Milwaukee radio host Mark Belling, Dec 2008:
"Well, OK. You're right about that. Everybody's buying guns before Obama comes in and outlaws them all."
5. G. Gordon Liddy, Nov 2008:
"The first thing you do is, no matter what law they pass, do not -- repeat, not -- ever register any of your firearms. Because that's where they get the list of where to go first to confiscate. So, you don't ever register a firearm, anywhere."
6. Hannity, in Nov 2008, forecasting that Obama would raise tax rates above 60% of income:
"“The new definition of patriotism and virtue is to give 60 or 70% of your income so that (Obama) can distribute checks to 40% of the population that pay no money in income taxes.”
7. In Mar 2009, http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/03/congress_passes_obama_youth_bi.php had this to say about the "GIVE Act":
"At best, this reprise of Hitler Youth will nationalize charitable work, using slave labor to help the State to further marginalize Christianity, which is one of the few remaining obstacles to totalitarianism. At worse, this and Obama's Serve America Act are part of his stated plan to create a race-based, Gestapo-style "Civilian National Security Force" as large and well-funded as the military."
8. Hannity, Apr 2009:
"This administration is taking steps to cut defense spending... that noise you hear off in the distance, those are the mullahs - well, they're cheering."
9. From a
WSJ Op-ed in Oct 2008:
"There is the candidate who insists, as he did last year in an article in Foreign Affairs, that "a strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace"; pledges to increase the size of our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines while providing them with "first-rate equipment, armor, incentives and training"; and seems to be as gung-ho for a surge in Afghanistan as he was opposed to the one in Iraq.
...
But what if a President Obama doesn't actually believe in the importance of a strong military to keep the peace? Or has an attenuated idea of what qualifies as a "strong" military? Or considers military strength a luxury at a moment of financial crisis? Or thinks now is the moment to smash the Pentagon piggy bank to fund a second Great Society?"
10. Oct 2008, Fox's Neil Cavuto echoing McCain's claims about Obama in a query to DNC adviser Brad Woodhouse:
""You know, with the economy hurting, markets tumbling, John McCain is saying this is hardly the time to put limits on wealth. He says that is something that Barack Obama wants to do. Is he right? ... Brad, what do you make of that notion that what Barack Obama would want to do as president is maybe put a cap on how rich you can become, and maybe that's reverberating in these markets."
11. Steve Forbes, on Cavuto's show, Oct 2008, describing what it would mean to elect Obama:
"That means more unionization. That means more regulation. It's going to be tough for the economy to emerge from those kind of burdens. ... The fear is not only are taxes going to be going up, but also you're going to have this mass unionization with card check. You're going to have other regulations coming in - the fairness doctrine - shutting down free speech, and all this is adding to the uncertainty. ... The market is saying it's riddled with uncertainty."Besides, why stop at hard-left-wing governments like Venezuela when you have outright Communist governments like China, the former Soviet Union, or the Vietnamese government to make comparisons with ... or did you miss the time when Glenn Beck "presented" Obama with a birthday cake painted red, with a large golden star on it? Or the time when Hannity labeled Obama the "Commissar-in-Chief"? Or Glenn Beck's "Obama National Anthem" video, set to the tune of the Soviet Anthem? (these should be easy to Google up)