Remember back in 2008 when John McCain found himself face-to-face with a victim of Right-wing media brainwashing at a televised Presidential campaign event in Minnesota?
“I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not uh — he’s an Arab.”
McCain seemed stricken by the human tragedy of what the fear and smear messaging blitz targeting his opponent had done to a gullible mind. It was commendable that he debunked the woman’s befuddled xenophobia and tried to gently guide her back to the general vicinity of reality:
“No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”
McCain seemed to have a hard time forgetting not to tell the truth on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, too. Here he is accidentally agreeing with John Murtha that racism was a factor in the 2008 election:
How did Rick Santorum respond when he recently found himself in a situation similar to McCain’s? Did he demonstrate the same basic decency?
Check out the video of Santorum and his interlocutor at an event, hosted by Washington Times and Townhall columnist Frank Gaffney and come to a fair and balanced conclusion for yourself. Be warned, this video contains truly mind-ripping levels of shrill, paranoid crazitude:
Did you hear what I heard? I heard a deeply disturbed individual going completely unglued and unleashing a tirade of lunacy that included birtherism and the bizarre assertion that President Obama attempted to drop a nuclear weapon on Charleston, SC.
“Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago and the three Admirals and Generals. He has totally destroyed our military. He has fired all the Generals and all the Admirals who said they wouldn’t fire on the American people if they ask ’em to do so if he wanted to take the guns away from ’em. This man is a Communist dictator. We need him out of the White House now.”
After listening, somewhat antsily, to the whole thing, Santorum responds that she should not blame him for not addressing her crazy train of issues because he’s not in Congress now. The assumption being, if only he were still in Congress, he’d be all over her batshit laundry list like tinfoil on Alex Jones’ pointy little head.
Rather than making any attempt whatsoever to defuse the time bomb of sick, twisted madness ticking away inside her addled cranium, Santorum instead lends credibility to her ravings.
“I’m not a sitting member of the Senate, so I’m not taking blame for any of that stuff,” … “But you hit on one point to which I absolutely agree: this is a complete lack of leadership.”
In the course of her word avalanche, the woman also talks about bringing the same concerns to Senator Ted Cruz who, unsurprisingly, did not disabuse her of any of it either, but counseled her to focus on the next election when a President Cruz could presumably tackle the issue of Obummer’s real birth certificate along with his gun-grabbing, Confederate state-nuking, tyrannical immigrant-aiding crusade.
What has the right-wing propaganda machine wrought? Any shame (or at least, politically induced worry) about how large segments of the Republican Party base has dangerously succumbed to media brainwashing techniques has gone out the window.
The sad and scary fact is, the line between the brainwashees and the brainwashers is getting blurrier all the time.