GOP 2016 Strategy: Islamophobia Check, Benghazi Baiting Check

      Paul Waldman wonders if Islamophiba has gone mainstream with the GOP and my answer to that is when wasn't it mainstream with them?

       Conservatives are deeply troubled by President Obama’s reluctance to use the words “Islam” and “Islamic” often enough when talking about terrorism. We saw this when many conservatives reacted with condemnation to the White House’s Summit to Counter Violent Extremism, which wrapped up yesterday.

But the importance many on the right are now placing on repeating terms like “Islamic extremists” as much as possible raises a possibility that ought to trouble the GOP: There’s a strain of anti-Muslim sentiment within their party that is growing stronger; what we don’t know yet is whether there’s anyone in the party with the guts to arrest its progress.

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/02/20/is-blatant-islamophobia-becoming-mainstream-inside-the-gop/

    What we seem to be seeing is that the GOP strategy for 2016 is not exactly going to be on a heightened plane. They are about accusing the President of the United States of not loving his based on a new bizarre litmus test over 1 word. There is no easy consensus about what to do about the ISIS threat which is no doubt very real. 

    However, the GOP seems to think the answer to the ISIS threat is to use the word 'Islamic terrorisim' as much as possible. It's important to focus on the Islamic nature of these terrorists for some reason that they never explain. Yet their insistence here seems to suggest that they see Islam itself as the problem and that maybe this is a Holy War against it-on the part of Christians?

    Am I overstating their position of a Holy War? How then do you explain this?

    Let’s look at what we’ve been hearing lately. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News isnow calling on American clergy to preach “holy war” against the Muslims who threaten our way of life. “President Obama is flat-out wrong in not describing the terrorist threat accurately,” he says. “Muslim fanatics want to kill us. And there are millions of them.” He offered this under a headline reading, “Judeo-Christian Values vs. the Jihad.”

   “When I hear the president of the United States and his chief spokesperson failing to admit that we’re in a religious war, it really bothers me,” says Lindsey Graham.

    Uh, Senator Graham actually wants to call this a religious war?! You talk about the best recruiting tool the terrorists could hope for. 

    They are using this for political effect as Giuliani thinks saying that the President 'wasn't raised like you and I was' will somehow make him politically relevant again. Why do you get the idea that 'you and me' are two Christian White people?

    Scott Walker too seems to think this is good politics where he implicitly seconded Giuliani's questioning of the President of the United States' love for the country. 

    "As the world now knows, Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said at a dinner featuring Walker, the Wisconsin governor, that “I do not believe that the president loves America.” According to Politico, Giuliani said President Obama “wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”

     "And Walker, just a few seats away, said . . . nothing. Asked the next morning on CNBC about Giuliani’s words, the Republican presidential aspirant was spineless: “The mayor can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well. I’ll tell you, I love America, and I think there are plenty of people — Democrat, Republican, independent, everyone in between — who love this country.”

      But did he agree with Giuliani? “I’m in New York,” Walker demurred. “I’m used to people saying things that are aggressive out there.”

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/scott-walkers-cowardice-should-disqualify-him/2015/02/20/2ee9fbf6-b900-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

    I'm just fascinated what the GOP 2016 strategy is shaping up as so far. 

    1. Accuse the President of not loving his country because he doesn't call this a religious war

    2. Beat the Benghazi drum though no wrongdoing was found in Darrell Issa's wasteful 2 year investigation.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/no-jeb-bush-isnt-his-own-man.html

     No doubt they will be throwing Benghazi mud at Hillary though no one can show that she nor Susan Rice nor anyone else did anything wrong here. 

     Meanwhile Jeb Bush seems to think that talking about how proud he is of his big brother will help him. 

    Truly the GOP has earned the name Stupid Party. 

     P.S. I had an interesting discussion with Greg, one of my best commentators, where I suggested that often people exaggerate disagreement but on the other hand I do also agree that sometimes seeming closeness on issues hides larger disagreement. 

    One thing that Greg said that I'd express some difference was is this:

    "Pretty soon gay marriage will be off the table, abortion will just not be discussed, middle class wages will be a thing for all politicians and war/intervention in the middle east will just be accepted as the norm since ISIS is so despicable. A Mitt Romney type could easily slip in and present better fiscal ideas than the current crowd of Dems who all seem beholden to wanting to tax the rich to "pay" for the admittedly good things they want to do with SS etc."

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/president-obama-outvoxes-them-all.html

    My concern is this could lead someone to wrongly surmise that the GOP has given up its cultural agenda which is patently false. The GOP prefers not to discuss is at the national Presidential level is all. They continue to push it full speed ahead at the state and local level. Here I answered Greg:

    "Now I agree that gay marriage is going in the right direction. However, abortion may not be talked about too much at the national level-the GOP is too smart as it doesn't want more of the Todd Akin Syndrome-the anti-choice agenda continues to move forward. In many Southern states a women's right to choose has been rolled back an rolled back. "

    "Technically Roe V. Wade remains on the books but abortion rights are being rolled back at the state level where in places like Texas you keep seeing most of the clinics in the state shut down. "

    "The GOP hasn't so much given up it's cultural agenda as been smart enough not to talk about it in front of the national audience too much but get all kinds of victories at the state level. "

    What you see at the national level is the elevation of process over policy. The GOP never really takes a principled, policy stand, but objects to how Obama does things that they sometimes even claim to support like immigration reform or Cuba. The process is wrong they complain. 

      In the case of ISIS it's the glorification over small word differences which itself recalls the Middle Ages where 100 year wars were fought over small sectarian word differences. 

     But why is this? Because on the matter of principle, they are losing. The minimum wage passed everywhere in November even in the red states, and they lost all their personhood ballot measures. That's why culture matters so much to them: it's all they have. So they quibble over process and small linguistic differences not big differences of principle.