Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here’s new data to prove it:

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.

The belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” is widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come.

• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
• Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”

These numbers all come from a brand-new Louis Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts.  It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

The poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It’s a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: “Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.”

Scary New GOP Poll – The Daily Beast.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, with roughly 200 lawmakers seated before him as well as Vicky Kennedy, the widow of the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), the president called the moment a “new season in America.”

“Today, after almost a century of trying, today, after over a year of debate, today, after all the votes have been tallied, health insurance reform becomes law in the United States of America. In a few moments when I sign this bill, all of the overheated rhetoric of reform will finally confront the reality of reform.”

“We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations,” Obama said. “We don’t fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what’s easy. That is not who we are, that’s not how we got here. We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities.”

Obama dedicated the signing to individuals whose stories of struggle have come to personify the need for reform. Included in that list was his mother, “who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days,” the president said. Then he talked about his mentor in this fight, former Senator Kennedy.

“I remember seeing Ted walk through that door in the summit in this room a year ago, one of his last public appearances,” Obama said. “It was hard for him to make it but he was confident we would do the right thing”

It was, undoubtedly, a moment of jubilation and relief for the president — largely because few people in the administration anticipated how arduous the debate would be over the course of the year. Speaking just days before the House cast the deciding vote on Sunday, a senior White House official gave a hint at what kind of toll health care has taken on the administration.

more…..

Obama Signs Health Care Bill: VIDEO, PHOTOS.

Blacker Than POTUS

Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he’s “blacker than Barack Obama” and tells Esquire magazine that he was a real person in a political arena dominated by phonies.

Blagojevich, referring to the president as “this guy,” says Obama was elected based simply on hope.

“What the (expletive)? Everything he’s saying’s on the teleprompter,” Blagojevich told the magazine for a story in its February issue, which hits newsstands Jan. 19.

“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived,” Blagojevich said. “I saw it all growing up.”

The White House refused to comment.

The twice-elected Democrat was impeached and removed from office last year after federal prosecutors arrested him on corruption charges that included trying to sell Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. He has pleaded not guilty.

via Blagojevich Esquire Interview: ‘I’m Blacker Than Barack Obama’.

Still an Ass Hat

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) offered a rare defense of Barack Obama on Sunday — and an even rarer rebuke of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — after the Arizona Republican accused the president of “leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America.”

In what was a reversal of the role he played during the presidential campaign — when he stumped on McCain’s behalf and spoke at the Republican convention — Lieberman said he disagreed with the anti-Obama radio ads McCain is running in his home state.

“You know every now and then John McCain and I disagree sometimes, and that’s one of the cases,” Lieberman said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So I don’t agree with that. I think the president understands the importance of bringing our government back into balance. Look he came in, in a most difficult economic time, inheriting a national debt that had doubled in the preceding eight years. I think you are going to hear from the president in the State of a Union, maybe earlier, about some tough medicine for our economy. We need it and I hope that there will be bipartisan support in Congress for doing that.”

more….

Role Reversal: Lieberman Defends Obama From McCain.

Matt Yglesias grabs a key paragraph from Peter Baker’s lengthy New York Times magazine piece, “Inside Obama’s War On Terror”, in which Baker finds a coven of unnamed conservatives staying mum on their support of Obama’s counterterror policies out of fear and/or resentment.

A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama’s policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.

more…..

Bush Officials Admit They Support Obama’s Counterterror Policies.

While you were eating the rest of that bag of chips and wondering whether to watch the teevee or stalk your ex on Facebook, Joe Biden and Barack Obama were dressed in evening clothes at the Kennedy Center, arguing the merits of recent work by Kennedy Center honorees

Obama’s view? “If both of these Guidos had expired by the mid-eighties, American Culture would’ve died with a little bit more class.” Wait did he really say that? Oh right, no. [White House Flickr]

Wonkette : Biden & Obama: Will They Ever Agree About Springsteen’s Later Work?.

Untitled Photo

If Obama wins health care, Northerners will get him over the finish line. Peter Beinart on the tectonic shift in Washington’s power structure—and the South’s struggle to rise again.

Since everyone else is doing it, let me propose a person of the decade: Ulysses S. Grant. Yes, I know he’s been dead for more than a century. But the “aughts” have been his decade—because between 2000 and 2009, the North vanquished the South yet again. Today, when the folks who run Congress come to talk to the folks who run the White House, Barack Obama (Illinois) and Joe Biden (Delaware) sit down with Nancy Pelosi (California), Harry Reid (Nevada), Richard Durbin (Illinois) and Steny Hoyer (Maryland). There’s nary a Southerner in sight. And not coincidentally, northern values are in ascendancy. The federal government has grown larger, more powerful, and more pro-labor. Racially saturated issues like the death penalty, welfare, and affirmative action have faded from political debate. On the environment, the Obama administration mimics regulatory initiatives born in California. On health care, it draws on the effort to provide universal coverage hatched in Massachusetts.

Full story:

How Dixie Lost Its Clout – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.