Let the pandering begin! The race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has certainly begun, and a number of potential candidates are already in full campaign mode, playing to likely Iowa caucus goers and anyone else from the far right. Unfortunately, this race to the bottom requires the contenders to outdo one another in an effort to sink to a new low. This forces some candidates to give up either their presidential aspiration or their honor.
Take the example of Donald Trump. He's toying with the idea of a 2012 presidential run so he's trying to gin up support among Republicans. To that end he has now become a "birther," which is to say someone who at least purports to question whether or not Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. I say purports to question because even Bill O'Reilly doesn't believe Trump is sincere about this, which buttresses my point. Trump isn't that stupid, ignorant or blinded by hatred, but he knows that people who are now make up a sufficiently large percentage of the Republican base that he has to pander to them. His attempts at playing this ridiculous game have been embarrassing and his claims can be reduced to ashes with the greatest of ease, but that doesn't matter because his target audience is impervious to facts or reason. To make matters worse, Trump is also playing to these people by spewing anti-Islamic bigotry.
Speaking of anti-Islamic bigotry, Donald Trump has his work cut out for him if he wants to catch Herman Cain. Mr. Cain, who's one of only three Republicans to have formed an exploratory committee (there are no formally declared candidates yet), has publicly proclaimed that as president he would appoint no Muslims to his cabinet nor to the federal bench. His rationale for this discrimination is his fear that they will impose Sharia law on this country. Perversely, he justifies his position of treating one religion differently from others with the First Amendment, because it prevents favoring one religion over another. He also states that Muslims should act like Christians and not try to impose their religious values on others, even though his core supporters want us to impose their version of Christian values on this country. Most importantly, this fear of Sharia law is a bogeyman constructed exclusively by bigots for bigots. Proposed laws to bar Sharia are unconstitutional, unnecessary and embarrassing, but defending them will get you a standing ovation at a Tea Party gathering where Herman Cain won the presidential straw poll.
Yes, I'm saying that far too many conservative Republicans have a fear of Islam that extends well beyond legitimate concern regarding terrorism and into the lunatic fringe. Newt Gingrich was counting on that when he warned an audience that we could become a "secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists." That's right; he tried to doubly terrify the stupid by simultaneously advancing the mutually exclusive specters of atheism and religious extremism. Newt's spokesman tried to rescue him by saying that he meant either atheist or radical Islamist, not both. That would make Gingrich's remark slightly less moronic but still utterly worthless since he can't decide which of two polar opposite directions the trend line is moving.
Finally, Mike Huckabee's entry into the race to the bottom makes me the saddest, because I honestly thought he was better than that. Yes, Newt Gingrich made headlines last year by suggesting that President Obama is incomprehensible to us unless we understand the mindset of a Kenyan anti-colonialist, but such words from Gingrich are predictable. Governor Huckabee, on the other hand, was a big disappointment when he essentially took a page from Gingrich's book and tried to paint President Obama as an anti-American, anti-Western, anti-colonialist who grew up in Kenya, sympathetic to the Mau Mau revolution and hostile to the British. Mike Huckabee may not know a Mau Mau from a muumuu, but like the others, he knows how to fertilize the field where fear and hatred grow, a particularly apt metaphor considering what they're spreading. Republicans who now seek the presidency apparently subscribe to the belief that, "The only thing we have to exploit is fear itself." If they insist upon playing to the dregs of their party, they should expect the scorn and contempt of decent people.
