By Brigitte L. Nacos
Deep partisan and ideological polarization has brought policy-making in Washington to a harmful standstill. Regardless of the consequences for the predicament of multimillion of Americans, Republicans—dominated by a Tea Party minority in their ranks—keep their eyes on one goal only: the defeat of President Barack Obama. They resist any initiative that would energize the country’s weak economic engine because of their fear that a meaningful GDP uptick and decrease of the unemployment rate would increase Obama’s reelection chances.
Hating Obama is an obsession and a virus that continues to spread. While long expressed on the web sites of right-extremist web sites, the hate of the sitting president seems to be guiding seemingly mainstream Republicans as well. Thus, in time for Halloween, the GOP committee in Virginia’s Loudon County sent out a mass e-mail with images that show President Obama as zombie with a bullet wound in his head and part of his skull missing. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, also a much hated figure in these circles, is shown with a terribly deformed face and one eye bulging from its socket.
After the Republican Party of Virginia, to its credit, condemned the e-mail, the Loudoun County GOP chair Mark Sell characterized it as “a light-hearted attempt to inject satire humor into the Halloween holiday.”
Take a look at these images and decide yourself whether these images are the expression of “light-hearted” humor or disgusting hate messages that should not have place in any mainstream party’s discourse.
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