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Bill Maher debunks many of the false claims made about Obama, and smashes the paranoid delusions about a fictional president the right has created.

Here is the video:

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<a href=”http://www.zideo.nl/playzideo/6c4957586d565a70″>Episode 235</a><a href=”http://www.zideo.nl/”>zideo.nl</a>

After Maher discussed the crazed Republican paranoia over Saul Alinsky, he said,

You 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 Alinsky. 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 boogeyman 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. And look what Gingrich said about him this month. (Video of Gingrich claiming Obama is against work). Yes, Obama is anti-work. You remember the bill he championed, The Grab A Corona And Call In Sick Act. You see, the difference is the Republicans hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do. What’s 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.

Bill Maher did a great job distinguishing between the Republicans’ fantasy Obama and the real president, but it goes deeper than paranoia. The right is terrified of Barack Obama. Fear is the heartbeat of conservative ideology. Conservatives aren’t bullies. They are cowards.

Beneath the loud bluster of a conservative is some who is ready to wet their pants.

The central tenant of American conservatism is fear of the unknown. This is why conservatives are always striving to return to the past. The future is bad because it will bring about change, and change equals fear.

After 9/11 George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s responses gave Republicans the green light to give in and let their fears run wild. What did Bush and Cheney do after 9/11? They went into hiding. In future years, Bush and Cheney would govern by spreading fear. They used fear as tool to gain and keep power. (This is why among numerous other things, Iraq was a “threat” and the color coded terror alert level was constantly tinkered with). Under George W. Bush fear was a way to rally the base.

After Barack Obama was elected, the fear that Bush had stoked for years became an inferno. Glenn Beck and others in the right wing media have made a fortune by catering to and feeding the fears of the right. The conservative billionaires build on Bush’s foundation of fear and harvested a whole Astroturf movement based on fear of Obama.

Fear has pushed Republicans to create an alternate reality president, Bill Maher’s Barack X. Political and media empires have been built on the right based on keeping the rank and file scared. Fear is the cottage industry of the conservative movement.

Bill Maher was correct when he said that the left didn’t do this with Bush, but what he didn’t mention is that some on the left are doing this with Obama. There are some members of the far left who have embraced the right’s politics of fear and use it for their own profit and gain to attack Obama. (Why should conservatives be the only ones who cash in on fear?)

As a general rule the vast majority of the left base their criticisms of Democrats and Republicans on facts, but those paranoid terrified types who now run the Republican Party exist on the left too.

Maher nailed it. The Republicans aren’t running against the Obama that most Americans know. They are campaigning against a figment of their own imaginations.

Because their primary voters can’t handle reality, the candidates for the GOP nomination have to buy into their lies, myths, and paranoid distortions about President Obama. Mitt Romney is making himself unelectable and Newt Gingrich is in the polls by pandering to the terrified delusions of the right.

Fear has driven the Republican Party to campaign against Barack X, and this same fear may end up sowing the seeds of their defeat in 2012.