Last updated on March 8th, 2012 at 07:46 pm
A few days ago Andrea Mitchell failed to catch a Santorum spokesperson referring to Obama’s “radical Islamic policies” and in the apology tour, Anne Kornblut from the Washington Post tittered about the “conspiracy theorists” who would jump on this statement to think it meant that Santorum really speaks this way about the President.
Politico reported Monday (yesterday):
“I expect we’re going to hear more from Alice Stewart (Santorum spokesperson) apologizing about those remarks. But there will be conspiracy theorists thinking it was some kind of message she was trying to get out or it was really on the mind of the Santorum campaign when they are talking about President Obama,” Kornblut said.
Newsflash to Andrea and Anne and the rest of the mainstream media: It is. Where have you been?
In fact, as a political reporter, for one to have missed this rather salient point, is confounding. It happens to be a major part of every Republican’s “policies”. They are, in fact, running on a 2008 redux of “He’s not like us.”
In case there is any confusion, here is Franklin Graham on this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe claiming that he can’t be sure Obama is a Christian and Obama doesn’t care about Christians being murdered, courtesy of Media Matters:
Graham: Obama seems more concerned about (Muslims) than the Christians that are being murdered in Muslim countries.
Graham then refuses to assert whether or not he thinks the President is a Christian, and relies upon the petulant and much-abused, “You have to ask President Obama….He has said he’s a Christian so I have to assume that he is but the question is what is a Christian….” refuge.
Graham then proceeds to give us a definition of a Christian, which apparently involves getting approval of Franklin Graham. Graham then goes on to suggest that Obama may not have really come to Jesus. The good news is that Graham is sure that Jesus has forgiven him (Franklin) for his sins. This much he DOES know. After hard push back from the Morning Joe panel, Graham then tells us that Islam sees Obama as a son of Islam. Ahhh….Yes, so now we’re impugning the President based on Graham’s feelings about how Islam sees the President. Nice trick.
But if we were to connect this to Santorum’s religious digs at Obama, we’d be “conspiracy theorists”.
Kudos to the MSNBC panel of Morning Joe for trying to force Graham to articulate his fallacious attacks on the President’s religious beliefs. Graham’s duck and dodge was quite the dance under the circumstances.
Franklin Graham is, of course, an evangelical leader of the Right (CEO of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritans Purse — think Palin) and as such, now a leader of the political religious cult referred to as the Republican Party. If he says something, you can bet the self-proclaimed “conservative” candidates (who are actually radical religious activists clinging to Randian economic beliefs in spite of all evidence that they don’t work and were, in fact, nothing but fiction from their birth which leads us to the odd mix of Ayn Rand who hated religion with the Corporate Christians of the Republican Party) will say it or have said it in certain circles.
And of course, Santorum did suggest that Obama’s policies are based on a theology other than the Bible (in his circles, this is a bad thing as he apparently has read our Constitution yet). Last Saturday in Ohio Santorum said this about Obama’s policies, “It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.”
Post 9/11, Graham called Islam a “a very evil and wicked religion” so remind me again why it’s a conspiracy to suggest that Republicans are deliberately using “Islamic” policies in regards to President Obama but they don’t mean it, even though they can’t say for sure if he’s a Christian and they slip up on national TV and say “radical Islamic policies” while one of their leaders, Franklin Graham, says Obama doesn’t care about Christians only Muslims. It’s not as if this were a new Republican attack; in March of last year, Graham suggested that President Obama had invited the Muslim Brotherhood into the US government.
Wow, yeah, this is so tin foily. Gee, whiz the connection is so far from reality. It’s not as if we didn’t see this in 2008 when the lady in the audience called Obama a Muslim after being instructed on this very thought by Fox Republicans and led there by a screeching Sarah Palin. Poor, doddering, confused John McCain had to correct her in order to save what remained of his reputation. Oh, yes.
Tin foil, they say.
If it is a conspiracy to suggest that Santorum (the Dominionist Catholic) actually refers to Obama’s policies as “radical Islamic policies” in private or is oh-so-subtly alluding to that and calling Obama’s religion into question, pray tell me why major news outlets reported on Santorum’s statements in Ohio as just that? Google it. Santorum had to come out and say he’s impugning Obama’s “worldview” not his “faith”.
Or do we have to prove that the religious leaders of the Right run the Republican Party? ABC news gets it. Here’s what ABC wrote about the South Carolina primaries:
With just more than a week before the crucial South Carolina GOP primary, more than 100 conservative Christians and evangelical leaders will gather in Texas this weekend to discuss which of the GOP candidates they will be backing in the race for the White House.
So, the connection between Graham and Santorum and the rest of the Republican Party’s religious attacks on Obama is tenuous tin foil? Not in reality land, it’s not. Ironically, Graham is flip-flopping all over the place in order to make Romney’s Mormonism okay for his flock, suggesting that we are not voting for a “pastor-in-chief”, apparently in spite of all suggestions on Graham’s behalf to the contrary when he is not discussing Mormonism.
Graham was sure today that Santorum is a Christian. He says Santorum’s faith is clear, and he was called out for this double standard by the MSNBC panel. Graham claims he is sure about Santorum’s faith because of his actions and what he stands for. He closed out with “I feel in my heart…. Rick Santorum is a fine man.”
Oh, so it’s Graham’s heart that we are to assume is a directive from God himself, apparently. Graham claims it’s his “business” to know other people’s spiritual positions. You can bet it’s his “business” because he makes a LOT of money spewing hate in the name of Jesus, a sin for which we are assured he has been forgiven.
Phew. So, according to some in the Main Stream Media, it would be a conspiracy for us to believe that Obama’s religion is being questioned by major Republican candidates. How’s that bridge to nowhere looking now?
It’s long past time for the Main Stream Media to stop pretending that Republicans aren’t playing the “Obama’s not like us” card. If they continue this specious game of pandering to the right wing, they need to be called out on it for they are as much to blame for allowing this to continue as the people uttering these transparent, fallacious attacks.
Enough.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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