By Brad Friedman on 1/29/2012, 5:35pm PT  

As you know, "liberals" are doing little more than using their well-worn "Alinksy Tactics" to fight against freedom in order to bring communism to the United States of America. That said, the fact is, nobody other than Rightwing fantasists and their gullible stooges seem to know who the hell this Saul Alinsky guy actually is!

I know I had no clue about him until I finally looked him up after a dozen or so times of being accused of using his "tactics" by various wingnuts (usually Breitbart cultists or brainwashed, incurious Fox "News" zombies).

It seems Bill Maher had a similar reaction to mine, as seen on Friday night's Real Time on HBO. More to the point, Maher's observations about the Republican campaign against Obama, pretty much mirrored mine, as I discussed in my analysis of last week's State of the Union Speech and in other venues where I've spoken about this lately. Specifically, the charge that Republicans can't defeat the actual Barack Obama on the merits, for a whole bunch of reasons, so they've decided instead to run against a "completely fictional President".

"His name is Barack X and he's an Islamo-Socialist revolutionary who's coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries and taking his cues from Europe --- or worse yet, Saul Alinksy!"

Maher went on to explain how Obama has done anything but the phony charges used against him, and then went on to compare those complaints with Democrats' complaints about Bush.

"Say what you will about the Left's hatred of Bush," said Maher, "at least we were hating on the real guy. We didn't invent a boogey-man who tanked the economy, took us to war on false pretenses and tortured prisoners. That was the actual guy!"

NOTE: This video seems to be getting removed from YouTube by HBO (clearly another Alinsky Tactic!), so you may wanna watch it quickly before this version is removed as well. It's well worth it. But, in case it's gone by the time you get to it, see below for the text from Maher's key rant near the end of the piece...

Ya know, Republicans have created this completely fictional President. His name is Barack X and he's an Islamo-Socialist revolutionary who's coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries and taking his cues from Europe --- or worse yet, Saul Alinksy!

And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. That's how Bush won in 2004: By running against John Kerry --- a French war criminal.

And speaking of Bush, I know conservatives are saying, "Oh, Bill, come on, Democrats did the same thing to him!" No. Say what you will about the Left's hatred of Bush, at least we were hating on the real guy.

We didn't invent a bogey-man who tanked the economy, took us to war on false pretenses and tortured prisoners. That was the actual guy!

But run down the list of complaints about Fantasy Obama: He wants to raise your taxes, even though he's lowered them; confiscate your guns, even though he's never mentioned it; and read terrorists their rights --- yeah, like he did Tuesday in Somalia...
...
You see the difference is, the Republicans hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he's thinking, what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did. What Bush was thinking didn't matter, because he wasn't.

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Article Categories: Bill Maher, Barack Obama, Republicans, Election 2012, Bush Legacy