Passive Aggressive

In regards to the Republicans, I'm starting to feel two things, sorry and scared.

Let's start with sorry.  The GOP has hated, HATED, Barack Obama.  They hated him back in 2008, when his victory let the air out of their W. balloon.  On Inauguration Night in 2009, they planned to derail his entire Presidency, having secret meetings, vowing to make him a one termer.  Legislatively, they knew he was inheriting a whopper of a mess from his predecessor, and they determined to fight him before, during and after everything he tried to do, creating a gridlock rarely seen in our government.

In the arena of public opinion, they went out of their way to build the conspiracy that his entire Presidency was illegitimate, pandering to the racists to fuel their outrageous claims.  It started with his birth certificate, allegations he wasn't born in the US, and became a word salad of everything the right in this country hates; Muslim, Socialist, Nazi-commie (???), gun hater, druggie, anti-white.  It didn't work.

President Obama, seeming to be the only one concerned about the state of the country, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.  He started to turn this country around.  The economy began to recover, jobs returned, the housing market ended it's free fall, and the American brand started to get its luster back. The GOP screamed it had nothing to do with the President, but the American people knew better.  To the right's slack jawed, pea brained disbelief and astonishment, Obama won a second term.

That just made the right more mad.  They became desperate to wipe away anything positive associated with President Obama.  They've tried to undo his legislation out of spite and bitterness, regardless of benefit to the American people, relying on an agenda driven Supreme Court to occasionally rule in their favor.  They fan the flames of the rampant racism within the Republican Party, which was getting more and more outraged Obama was still pushing his own agenda. But what really made the politicians and the intolerant voters furious was something they couldn't deny; President Obama has been successful, a fact which sends them into a whirlwind of outrage.

But then came the election of 2014.  After outspending the Democrats at obscene levels, and rigging the system to make it harder for Democrats to win, the Republicans took the Senate, and vowed to turn back the scoundrel!  They came out with a game plan to stop him once and for all, but it had one fatal flaw; President Obama was still the president, with a tremendous amount of power, and he was not about the lie down and let the Republicans walk all over him and his legacy.  He saw the right had a deep fracture between far right Republicans, and extreme far right, racist, pseudo-Libertarians.  He saw the Republicans seemed to have forgotten how to write legislation, as they had spent the last six years just trying to stop someone else's.  And he knew the Republicans had an impossible amount of seats to hold in the 2016 election, meaning the Democrats would likely recover the Senate, if not ensure another Democrat in the White House for the next four years.  Obama just had a stronger hand, and the GOP, drunk on their November victories, sobered up quickly when they realized how little control they had.

Which brings up to the little passion play we saw played out on Tuesday in the Congress. The GOP purposely went behind the Presidents back, and invited a foreign leader from an close ally who himself HATES Obama, Netanyahu from Israel, to come and try to fan the flames of a trumped up foreign policy issue, Iran and nuclear weapons.  They went out of their way to make this as partisan as possible, while insisting politics had nothing to do with such an obvious political move.  The GOP got excited, thinking this would be a way to weaken the President in the eyes of the American people and the International community.  Their giddiness bubbled over to a point where they fawned over the leader of a foreign country, trying to make the argument "Netanyahu should be our President," and nearly handing over the ability to declare war for America, including dispatching troops, equipment and tax dollars, to the leader of a foreign country, just because they thought it would make the President look bad.

And...it didn't.  The American people were not fooled by this clear partisan, anti-American stunt.  They did not grab their pitchforks and torches and head over to Pennsylvania Avenue.  They at best ignored it, at worst, turned Israel into a partisan issue (imagine if Netanyahu loses!).  Determined to still shame the President and make BiBi's speech the greatest one in the history of mankind, right wing social media trolls made post after post on how angels openly weeped Tuesday morning at the word beauty of Netanyahu and how all Democrats who didn't attend should be "arrested" (I got that one TWICE!).  It still has not worked.

The GOP is boiling mad, furious their latest ploy has failed.  Today they snapped, calling the President anti-American for not bowing down to a foreign leader, a "bitchy high school girl" for not doing everything Netanyahu says, and accused liberals of a plot to eventually "kill everyone."

It's the last one that leads me to my second point.  The Republicans scare me.  They're so frustrated Obama is still President, they're so mad he's had a tremendous amount of success, even in the face of overwhelming opposition (imagine if the right had tried to work with him at all), and they're getting more and more desperate to try to stop him.  I'm worried someone on the right, politician or pundit, will call for violence against the President.  They'll come out with a deranged plea, "Obama is going to get away with it!  Won't someone stop him?  Can't anyone make sure he doesn't get away with it!"

Then someone will snap.  There is already a fan fiction element of the Republican party dedicated to encouraging fantasies about causing the President harm.  If, God forbid, someone does attack him, the same people who have fanned this irrational behavior will be the ones saying, "I never wanted anything bad to happen to the President.  I only said he was going to kill your kids, and your grandmother, as he took away your money, and guns, and that someone should do something about it.  Where do you get the idea I ever wanted to see anything bad happen to him?"

Dear Lord, please keep the President and all of his staff safe.  Bless the secret service who guards him and may they get through the next two years unscathed.  Then, the right can insist they never worked against him, and how even though they had their differences, they were proud to serve at a time of the first non-white President.

Sure they were (Sarcasm!).  There aren't enough delete keys and white out in the world to cover up the GOP's shameful legacy in the age of Obama.