Reaction to Nugent Showcases Manufactured Outrage On The Right
A few days after proudly pandering to washed up, mediocre rocker Ted Nugent and securing the crack-pot vote of gun club conspiracy theorists, Mitt Romney was given the very unenviable task of actually confronting his shameless salt-of-the-earth pandering and hypocritical acts by condemning the deranged and violent rhetoric of Ted Nugent. The only problem, of course, was that wasn’t really a condemnation at all.
Milt Priggee / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Priggee)
After the fusillade of feigned outrage tossed at Democrats by conservatives over the Hillary Rosen remark, Democrats rightfully called Romney out over enthusiastically aligning himself with the likes of Ted Nugent despite the right-wing nut job’s history of saying incredibly disturbing and violent (mostly drunken and incoherent) things aimed at President Obama. Either clearly missing the point of Rosen’s remarks or, more plausibly, deciding that his detractors are raving lunatics (see Ted Nugent) and will never give him any breathing room, President Obama rejected the remarks made by Rosen towards Anne Romney. If only the same could be said about Mitt Romney.
The Romney campaign played along, but with minimal effort — it blamed both sides for Nugent’s comments, with language nearly identical to its blame-both-sides statement on offensive comments made by Rush Limbaugh earlier this year.
Talking Points Memo rightfully pointed out a glaring similarity between the Romney camp’s reaction to the Nugent incident and Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke earlier this year. It seems Mitt Romney only condemns a popular right-wing target out of political expediency. Heck, the man is the personification of political expediency.
After the Fluke controversy, Romney offered these rather weak and tepid remarks: “I’ll just say this, which is, it’s not the language I would have used.”
The Ted Nugent incident proves no different.
“Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from,” Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul told TPM. “Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil.”
And it seems Democrats wholeheartedly agree that the Romney response was as feigned as the tears during the funeral of Kim Jong Il “That has got to be the weakest, most meaningless reaction imaginable,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told TPM. “Nugent’s comments were violent and were shocking and beyond the pale — and if Mitt Romney can’t condemn him in no uncertain terms he is not prepared to lead.”
Apparently it was serious enough for the Secret Service to respond.
It’s clear that the man who brought us such profound poetry as “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” is but a disorganized, redneck hayseed who would sooner shoot himself in the foot than come close to harming the President. However, that Ted Nugent spoke at such a powerful and far-reaching special interest group as the NRA, a group that boasted an annual budget of $222,841,128 in 2004 and millions of members, is quite serious. Furthermore, that a candidate vying for the oval office would not only align himself with Nugent, but essentially align himself with potentially crazier members of the NRA is even more serious. What’s more, that Romney would cynically and relentlessly exploit the context of Rosen’s remarks by attaching them to the entire Democratic party shows this man to be without a modicum of principles and, not surprisingly, a willingness to say anything to get elected.
Here’s a video of Sean Hannity and Bob Beckel discussing some heated comments made by Nugent. Hannity’s lack of outrage is very telling:
Cagle Post » Reaction to Nugent Showcases Manufactured Outrage On The Right.
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#1 by danielwalldammit on April 25, 2012 - 12:16 AM
The Republican party now lives by the principle of false equivalence. It works because too many American have absolutely no sense of judgement on these things.