Dude

"This Really Is The Apocalypse"

Ben Smith notes an email from a Republican focus group.

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

There is a remarkable amount of 'end times' language surrounding the Obama candidacy, and as we've discussed, some of it is really his own fault. Obama is a scion of the Alinsky movement, and Saul Alinsky did dedicate his book on "community organizing" to Lucifer. All those emails I've been getting warning that Obama is the Antichrist? I've spent my whole life thinking the Book of Revelation was impossibly vague to be considered a useful prophecy, and that it was always foolish to trot it out to try and interpret contemporary events.

As Dad29 says, though, you don't have to think "Antichrist" -- it's enough to think "Lucifer," because Alinsky did. The Alinsky method is deeply inhumane: the declaration that you should 'hold opponents to every part of their rule book' is intended to rule out compromise and discourse. Every opponent is a hypocrite, because every opponent is human and people can't live up to their every principle all the time. The system intentionally makes the perfect the enemy of the good, in every case, all the time.

I hope Jim Webb is right, and I'm wrong: and it is comforting to find that there are people I respect who are Obama supporters. I know I can put some faith in them, even if I have none in the man himself. Jim Webb is out there, Phil Carter of Intel Dump, retired General Zinni -- these are people I respect, whether or not we always agree and even when we rarely do. That's comforting.

It's important to have trust in such good and worthy men as there are on the other side, in the event of an Obama victory. We shouldn't follow Alinsky's road -- of making the perfect the enemy of the good, and all our opponents enemies. Sen. Obama himself is an unworthy man and the follower of a vicious creed, but with him come also good men of accomplishments with whom we have only some disagreements. In the event that we are forced to endure an Obama presidency, I am glad to know there are good people on his team.