If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel then crying racism must be in the other half of the duplex.

Many of us noted back during the ‘08 primaries and general election that the Obama camp would cry racism at the drop of a hat. He performed poorly in Pennsylvania because of racism. He was trounced in WV because of racism. In August 2008, Jacob Weisberg wrote that the only reason McCain could win the election was because of racism. They could never quite fathom that there were lots of reasons to oppose Obama other than race. Being the least qualified presidential contender since Wendell Wilkie and choosing convicted terrorists, terrorist who would have happily murdered Americans were it not for their epic levels of incompetence, and racist hatemongers as BFFs and mentors certainly popped on my radar as reasons why even Hillary Clinton was preferable to Barack Obama.

We predicted that should he win, the climate would only get worse.

Up until this weekend the accusation that only racists opposed Obama had been made sotto voce with the real criticism being directed at cartoonists. Now that criticism is being directed at all of us.

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…(care of the much more interesting Jen Rubin) for two reasons. One, people like Dowd really do think that we think and talk like this:

“I hear Poppy Bush is furious at you,” he says. “He’s telling folks he put Junior in your care and you stole his presidency and destroyed the Bush name and derailed Jeb’s chances to ever be president, and P.S., you wrecked the country and the Atlantic alliance to boot. He has it in for Lynne, too. Thinks she spun you up, like she did in high school with her flaming batons. He thinks you got loopy from all the heart procedures. And Colin’s mad at you.”

“He can go to yoga with Pelosi for all I care,” Dick growls.

Bizarre to contemplate, but true. There are people out there who apparently just can’t function in life unless they’ve convinced themselves first that the opposition has a Deep, Dark Conspiracy in place. I suppose that it’s a motivation exercise, or something.

Moe Lane

PS: The second reason? I thought that I’d give whoever she might have ripped off to write this piece a better chance of seeing it.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

You wonder if Maureen Dowd reads her own paper when she writes things like this: “Mr. Obama called W. on Friday to give him a heads-up about the repudiation on Iraq. Robert Gibbs said the call was not at all contentious.” Should someone tell her it wasn’t contentious because it marked  the fulfillment not the repudiation of Bush’s Iraq policy? (Hence, the decision to leave the most troops possible in place through the next election and leave 50,000 there for a while thereafter.)

–Jennifer Rubin. It’s long been a mystery to me as to why Dowd’s trite, lame, desperate attempts at humor, coupled with her complete ignorance of basic facts, haven’t gotten her fired from the New York Times. I suppose it says something about the newspaper that they keep her there; either the Times feels pity for a columnist who likely won’t be able to write anywhere else, or they are blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing to their reputation by keeping Dowd around.

For those who don’t feel like risking the SAN/Intelligence loss that can come from reading one of Dowd’s columns, let me summarize: I like Blagojevich more than I like Paterson, because Blagojevich is clearly insane - do you hear that, Illinois voters? Insane - and Paterson did my friend Marquise Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg wrong by not picking her right away.  That let the awful, awful Clintons destroy the chances for the best choice for the NY Senate, and never mind all those Republicans out there who were revving their chainsaws and grinning evilly.  I hope that they primary that gun-loving, bailout hating Gillibrand - and that they primary that adulterous, drug-using governor, too!  That’ll show ‘em.

OK, I may have added a little subtext there, but really: the title is “Whose Governor is wackier?” and everything (via Hot Air Headlines).  That tells you something right there.

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