Barack Obama

Karl Rove, whose American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking President Obama’s economic record without avail, has become something of a punching bag for a defeated and embittered Religious Right. Shortly after the election, Gary Bauer faulted Rove for focusing on the economy rather than on abortion rights and marriage equality and radio host Janet Mefferd expressed concern that “we didn’t even talk much about radical Islam.” A few days later, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios even accused Rove of moderating the GOP’s previous focus on anti-gay policies.

Today, Joel Gilbert, director of the widely distributed anti-Obama movie “Dreams From My Real Father,” joined the pile-on. In an interview with Renew America’s Cliff Kincaid, Gilbert argued that Rove made a fatal mistake by focusing his attacks on the economy rather than on Gilbert’s theory that the president’s real father was communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism,” Gilbert said.

"I heard complaints from Rove's conservative donors four weeks in advance of the election," filmmaker Joel Gilbert told Accuracy in Media. "They kept asking, 'where is the money being spent?'" The questions intensified after Obama's victory and the Democrats achieved a larger 55-45 majority in the Senate.

Gilbert, who directed the documentary "Dreams from My Real Father," about Obama's Marxist roots, notes that Rove had argued to conservative donors that the winning strategy for Republicans was to place ads focusing on the poor economy.

Gilbert's film, which was distributed to millions of voters and argued that Obama's real biological and ideological father was Communist Party USA propagandist Frank Marshall Davis, attempted to expose Obama's character and background. But Rove, Romney and Republican leaders did not want to raise these issues. In fact, Rove had argued that calling Obama a socialist or left-winger would backfire.

Gilbert argued that Obama was a pop-culture phenomenon with a high "likability" factor and that "Voters perceived Obama as a nice man with an inspiring family story." The right strategy, he says, was to expose Obama's Marxist views, the role of Frank Marshall Davis in molding Obama's political philosophy, and Obama's questionable statements about his own upbringing.

Gilbert says, "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism."

Gilbert’s film, meanwhile, is on record as having “revolted” focus groups of swing voters and disgusted at least one Florida voter so much that he decided to vote for the president.

The New York Times today offers up the wide distribution of Joel Gilbert’s “Dreams From My Real Father” as a case study in “how secretive forces outside the presidential campaigns can sweep into battleground states days before the election.”

According to the Times, Republican strategist Frank Luntz, at the behest of unnamed conservative activists, focus-group tested Gilbert’s film this summer, along with Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016” and “The Hope and Change,” a Citizens United joint featuring interviews with disaffected Obama supporters.

“The Hope and the Change,” directed by Stephen K. Bannon and produced by Citizens United, the conservative political advocacy group, tested highest with focus groups and is running on local cable stations. It was shown here just before Monday’s debate.

Many conservatives also loved Mr. D’Souza’s film and wanted it to have wider distribution. It tested poorly, however, and Mr. Luntz warned his clients that it could undermine their cause.

Focus groups were revolted by “Dreams From My Real Father,” with its conspiracy theory paranoia and dubious evidence. It compares photos of the president and Mr. Davis, noting that they have similar noses and freckles. It also purports to have uncovered nude photos of Mr. Obama’s mother in a bondage magazine.

Mr. Luntz’s clients were not surprised. Their thinking was, “I want to know if it’s as bad as I think it is,” Mr. Luntz said.

The opinion of Luntz’s focus groups mirrors that of at least one Florida voter who got Gilbert’s movie in the mail and found it so disgusting he decided to vote for Obama.

Gilbert, for his part, remains convinced that he will come out with the upper hand, and perhaps beat out The New York Times for a Pulitzer:

Mr. Gilbert will not say where he received the money to distribute his movie — he claims to have sent out four million copies. “It’s a private company, so we don’t disclose who’s part of it,” he said. He also blamed the mainstream media for not looking deeper into the story he uncovered, telling The New York Times, “I hope you’re not angry or jealous that I beat you to it and might win the Pulitzer Prize.”

Historian Paul Kengor has been doing a circuit of right-wing talk shows, promoting his new book, “The Communist” which ties President Obama to a childhood family friend, the labor activist and writer Frank Marshall Davis. Although Kengor refuses to comment on filmmaker Joel Gilbert’s hypothesis that Davis is actually the president’s biological father, he argues that a direct line can be drawn between Davis’ Communist writings and the president’s support of universal health care, advocacy for the middle class, and even his “Change” and “Forward” slogans.

In an interview with Janet Mefferd this week, Kengor painted Davis as a sinister and strange influence on the young Obama’s life. Echoing Mike Huckabee’s accusation that the president has a “different worldview” because he grew up with “madrassas” rather than “going to Boy Scouts,” Kengor marveled that Obama’s grandfather chose Davis as a mentor for his grandson rather than “a Boy Scout troop master, a little league coach.” Not only that, but Obama’s grandfather and Davis “would even smoke dope together.”

“So I tell people, I honestly feel bad for Obama. This wasn’t exactly a wholesome, Norman Rockwell upbringing,” he added.

Kengor: In 1970, Stanley Dunham was looking for a black male father figure, mentor, role model for his grandson because the father was gone. So, right there, Janet, you or I, we have sons, grandsons, we’d probably pick as a mentor a boy scout troop master, a little league coach.

Mefferd: Yeah, someone upstanding.

Kengor: I mean, to think that you’d pick a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA, called to Washington to testify on his quote-unquote Soviet activities by the Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee, is kind of remarkable and kind of revealing.

Mefferd: Sure.

Kengor: But that’s who Stanley Dunham picked. And Stanley Dunham and Frank Marshall Davis were real close. They’d play cards together, Scrabble, drink together. One person named Donna Weatherly Williams, who was there when Dunham introduced Obama to Davis in 1970, says that Davis and Dunham would even smoke dope together.

Mefferd: Oh boy.

Kengor: And, I mean, here you’ve got, at that point Frank Marshall Davis would have been about 65 years old. So I tell people, I honestly feel bad for Obama. This wasn’t exactly a wholesome, Norman Rockwell upbringing.

Mefferd: No, awfully dysfunctional.

Kengor: Very dysfunctional, very.

Later, Kengor revisited the right-wing meme that President Obama somehow hates Winston Churchill because he removed George W. Bush’s bust of Churchill when he redecorated the Oval Office. This hatred of Churchill, according to Kengor, could very well have been instilled by a drunken rant of Frank Marshall Davis:

Kengor: If you would have asked me five years ago, or anybody in America five years ago, name one American who doesn’t like Winston Churchill…

Mefferd: Now we know!

Kengor: Nobody, yeah. Then suddenly in January 2009, well we have one: Obama. And now we know of another: Obama’s mentor. And actually, I should add, as a Cold War historian, I did know of Americans who didn’t like Churchill. It was members of Communist Party USA and the Daily Worker. So Davis was towing the Soviet line, the Communist Party line. Does this mean that Obama doesn’t like Churchill because of Davis? I can’t say that for sure, but I mean these guys met many times together, at least over a dozen times together, and late evenings. And you know Davis was always very political, always talking about politics, drank a lot, could be very incendiary in his comments. And I’m sure that Obama must have heard a few diatribes against Winston Churchill by Frank Marshall Davis.

WorldNetDaily’s intrepid birther Jerome Corsi is out with a new report today, in which he uncovers that President Obama’s wedding band is actually inscribed with the Arabic for “There is no god except Allah.”

Corsi’s source for this revelation? None other than all-purpose anti-Obama conspiracy theorist Joel Gilbert. Gilbert has recently achieved some success with his film “Dreams From My Real Father,” in which he claims that the president’s real father was labor activist and communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. The film is currently being sent to households around Ohio, with the help of an undisclosed source of funding, and recently received the enthusiastic endorsement of the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. Gilbert, apparently, believes that Obama is not only a hard-core Marxist, but also a secret Muslim:

"Dreams from My Real Father” producer Joel Gilbert, an Arabic speaker and an expert on the Middle East, was the first to conclude that Obama’s ring, reportedly from Indonesia, bore an Islamic inscription

…

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, an expert on Islamic history, noted Obama wore the ring during his high-profile speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, in the first months of his presidency.

“Now we have a new context for what Obama meant when he told the Islamic audience in Cairo that he has ‘known Islam on three continents,” Gilbert said. “He also told the Cairo audience that he considered it part of his responsibility as president of the United States ‘to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.’ All religious Muslims are by definition required to defend Islam.”

Before he turned his attention to the president’s supposed Communist genetics, Gilbert directed a number of Bob Dylan documentaries and “Atomic Jihad,” a film accusing President Obama of appeasing Iran.

Corsi has previously speculated that the same ring, which the president has been pictured wearing before his marriage to Michelle Obama, is proof that he was once married to his male Pakistani roommate.

Joel Gilbert, the filmmaker behind the theory that President Obama inherited a Marxist worldview from his “real father” Frank Marshall Davis – a theory adopted this week by the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party -- spoke last month with right-wing radio host Michael Savage.

Gilbert told Savage that Obama’s 2008 “Change” slogan was actually “a code word for a revolution to end capitalism” and assured listeners that by the end of his second term, the president will “achieve what he wants, which is to make America irreversibly socialist.” Part of this transformation, Gilbert said, is that “the middle class’ health care is going to be given away to poor and illegals.”

Savage: How is Obama’s campaign different this time around?

Gilbert: Well, what’s different is he was being very general and vague about ‘hope and change’ and everybody just read into it what they wanted, nobody really knew what ‘change’ meant from the socialist point of view. ‘Change’ is a code word for a revolution to end capitalism. Now his Marxist ideology is just coming through loud and clear. His entire campaign is based on the top one percent, of the breathtaking greed of a few. He talks about how the rich don’t pay their fair share. Well, anybody can just Google it and see that the top income brackets do pay up to 40 percent of income and it kind of goes down from there. So his entire campaign is based on this lie, this absurd notion that we don’t have a fair tax system. But this is the classic Marxist rhetoric that Obama would have gotten during this indoctrination from his real father, Frank Marshall Davis.

Gilbert: National healthcare is simply a socialist tool to eliminate the middle and upper classes. So for Obama, poor quality, long waits and high taxes in this national health care doesn’t matter. It’s just a socialist tool. For Obama in the next term, the middle class’ health care is going to be given away to poor and illegals. Middle class’ employers are going to be taxed and regulated out of business. And the middle class’ retirement will evaporate into a bankrupt, socialist state, and Obama will achieve what he wants, which is to make America irreversibly socialist without anyone ever realizing how it happened.

When the Family Research Council wasn’t rallying support this week for Todd Akin or pushing to keep the ban on abortions in the case of rape or incest in the GOP platform, it found time to denigrate an entire religion. FRC sends out weekly Prayer Team alerts, asking “for your prayers relating to various public policy issues.”

In his remarks, the President suggested that Thomas Jefferson may have hosted the first White House Iftar Dinner and he showcased the Koran from Jefferson's library (Fact: Thomas Jefferson long advocated using military force to deal with hostile Muslims in the Mediterranean and ordered the Marines to Tripoli among his first acts as President and had a Koran primarily to study the fanatical religion of his adversaries).

The Iftar event stood in bold contrast to the National Day of Prayer. In four years, President Obama has neither hosted a White House NDP event nor sent a representative to the national event on Capitol Hill, as previous presidents have done. […] President Obama's Iftar remarks are amazing reading. While he said great things about religious freedom, his tribute to Islam stands in shocking contrast to his dealings with Christians and the National Day of Prayer. He praised Muslims in positions throughout his administration.

The Greene County, Virginia Republican Committee publishes a monthly newsletter for members called “The Constitutional Conservatives.” The newsletter is heavy on Tea Party rhetoric about how Obama and liberals are ruining America, and so forth. But even by these standards, an item in the March newsletter stands out.

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized.

 

An individual who has come to power within a Nation which yields it’s strength over the entire world.

 

An elected leader who shuns biblical praise, handicaps economic ability, disrespects the honor of earned military might.

 

In the coming days and weeks  ~ we the people must come to grasp as a common force, our very soul’s, that our future as a sovereign nation is indeed at risk.

 

If every single individual that you know, would contact 25 other individuals  ~ we can make a difference that will be heard across the Commonwealth and in Washington.

 

The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware  ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.

Washed up rocker and reality TV star Ted Nugent appeared at the NRA’s national convention in St. Louis. Nugent, a longtime NRA board member and regular presence at conventions, rallied the NRA faithful on Saturday to vote for Mitt Romney: “Your goal should be to get a couple thousand, per person who’s here, to vote for Mitt Romney in November.”

“We’ve got four Supreme Court justices who don’t believe in the Constitution. Does everyone here know that four of the Supreme Court justices not only determined you don’t have the right to keep and bear arms, four Supreme Court justices signed their name to a declaration that Americans have no fundamental right to self-defense.”

 

With surrogates like Nugent, Romney should have no trouble alienating moderates.

 

UPDATE: Early last month, Tagg Romney touted Nugent's endorsement of his father:

 

 

If the organizers of the national prayer breakfast ever want a sitting president to attend their event again, they need to expect that any leader in his right mind is going to ask — no, demand — that he be allowed to see a copy of the keynote address that is traditionally given immediately before the president’s.

 

That’s how devastating was the speech given by a little known historical biographer named Eric Metaxas, whose clever wit and punchy humor barely disguised a series of heat-seeking missiles that were sent, intentionally or not, in the commander-in-chief’s direction….

Standing no more than five feet from Obama whose binder had a speech chock full of quotes from the Good Book, Metaxas said of Jesus:

 

“When he was tempted in the desert, who was the one throwing Bible verses at him? Satan. That is a perfect picture of dead religion. Using the words of God to do the opposite of what God does. It’s grotesque when you think about it. It’s demonic.”

 

“Keep in mind that when someone says ‘I am a Christian’ it may mean absolutely nothing,” Metaxas added for good measure, in case anybody missed his point.