The minute Senator Barack Obama had traction, the right starting emphasizing his middle name. "Barack Hussein Obama", they sneered. They never talked about him without saying all three names as if the fact his parents gave him the middle name "Hussein" automatically disqualified him to run for President. The smear was both so dumb and transparent, it was laughable.
Then other right-wing bigots like Debbie Schlussel took the attack even further:
[W]hile Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that's not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he's a Christian, but they do not.
So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on Oprah); is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?
Is that even the man we'd want to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, if Hillary Clinton offers him the Vice Presidential candidacy on her ticket (which he certainly wouldn't turn down)?
NO WAY, JOSE . . . Or, is that, HUSSEIN?
Then Reverend Sun Myung Moon's INSIGHT magazine spread the false rumor that Obama secretly attended an Islamic "madrassa" school as a six-year old. Apparently these false rumors prove that "Barack Hussein Obama" really is a closeted radical Muslim and unfit for office.
Per INSIGHT, Hillary Clinton's campaign was behind this damaging revelation. Just when you thought the statute of limitations was up on the right bleating, "It's Clinton's fault!", they bring it back with a twist -- "It's Clinton's fault. Hillary Clinton's fault."
The INSIGHT article cited no evidence or proof that this attack actually came from Clinton. Apparently, INSIGHT wants to divide and conquer the Democrats. They want Obama to think the Clintons are smearing him and cause dissent in the Democratic Party. They get to have their cake and eat it too. They get to smear Obama AND blame the dirty tricks on Clinton. So far, we aren't falling for it.
As Media Matters points out, Melanie Morgan, Rush Limbaugh and Fox's John Gibson also ran with the false rumors:
Morgan read from the article, then asserted that Clinton "is going to try to derail the train before it gets out of the station," adding: "And we know that Hillary Clinton has used private eyes to spy on the private lives of many of her political opponents as well as the girlfriends of her husband over the years." [...]
On his program, Limbaugh read the story and claimed: "This is Hillary's team doing this. This is not a bunch of Republicans saying this. They wouldn't dare; they don't have the guts." [...]
Gibson addressed the InsightMag.com article as his "Big Story" at the beginning of the show and again in his "My Word" segment at the end of the program. After claiming that Clinton "has reportedly outed Obama's madrassa past," Gibson told Republican strategist Terry Holt: "Now, we have heard about dirty politics before. Republicans aren't involved in this one." [...]
Holt responded: "This was either a despicable act by an absolutely ruthless Clinton political machine -- we know that they are capable of doing this. But I also thought, you know, it wasn't directly linked to Hillary Clinton." Holt then speculated that Obama himself could have been behind the story, saying that "if you took a page out of the Clinton book and you are really shrewd and you were Barack Obama, you might want to put this out yourself so that you could deal with it early in the political campaign and get it over with." But Holt also noted that "a madrassa, before it was politicized and really taken over by the fundamentalists primarily from Saudi Arabia, it was nothing more than a parochial school, and Barack Obama was in school 40 years ago."
[Read more about Gibson's hate in my The War On Oprah ]. According to Fox, Obama is an undercover Muslim brother. Think Progress summarizes Friday's Fox and Friends:
Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy pointed out that madrassas are "financed by Saudis" and "teach this Wahhabism which pretty much hates us," then declared, "The big question is: was that on the curriculum back then?" Later, a caller to the show questioned whether Obama's schooling means that "maybe he doesn't consider terrorists the enemy." Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade responded, "Well, we'll see about that."
The fact that Obama attended both a Catholic and a Muslim school in Indonesia is hardly a secret since Obama wrote about it in his best seller Audacity of Hope. The fact that he was SIX at the time makes this smear a total joke. Plus, Obama is Christian. He frequently talks about his Christianity and has been a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ since the eighties.
So while bashing Hillary for her alleged dirty tricks, the right wing attack machine gets to use those same those false rumors to smear Obama AND then they get to distance themselves from the trash talking and mudslinging by pointing the finger squarely at Hillary. Now that Clinton has announced her committee, I bet they'll be trotting this tactic out with increasing frequency.
It didn't take long for the Republican spin machine to play the race card and the blame game. Obviously they can't use the "N Word" against Obama, so they start with the "M Word" and blame Hillary in the process. Just wait, it won't take them long to accuse Obama of "using the race card" and then crediting Clinton with the attack. I don't know what the context will be, but trust me it is coming.
The reality is that these smears are transparent and make them look desperate. Is this the best they can do? The good news is it shows that they are taking Obama's candidacy very seriously. Fasten your seat belts Obama, it's going to be a bumpy ride.