Bristol    Ted Nugent traded in his guitar for a gun a long time ago, and now he’s stomping around Texas, rather than Michigan, but the verses he’s yelling now are totally without rhyme or reason.  Of course the Republicans, including the current Attorney General, running for Governor of Texas, claim to not know anything much about Nugent, but they know enough to know that he’s the opening act to throw red meat at the foaming mouths of their hard right rallies for their campaign faithful.  He’s one of the performing puppets saying what they can’t, so that no one misses the message, and it’s a heinous message of hate.

            Nugent in one of the weirdest non-apologies on the recent record said he was sorry to his Republican betters but “not necessarily to the President” for saying:

I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame, enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the Acorn community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States.

            CNN and the New York Times have pointed out that the whole “subhuman mongrel” phrase has a direct historical relationship with the same constant refrain used by the Nazis against the Jews, and in many ways that says it all, but the continued red-baiting and ACORN-hating that has become part of the regular rhetoric of the right should also be roundly condemned as inappropriate political speech.

            And, it’s becoming way too common, especially in Texas.

            A weird question on my Facebook page sent me looking for its source and it wasn’t hard then to put two and two together on the hater brigade in Texas, where you can now quicklyconnect the recent announcement of Breitbart.com and their expansion of their rightwing sensation mongering to Texas to insert themselves into the Governor’s race with the repeated resurfacing of James O’Keefe and his antics along with sidekicks like, Brandon Darby, notorious for his alleged spying infiltration of various groups several years ago.  One is likely financier, while the others play the provocateurs.  

            I watched a video late the other night with O’Keefe and Darby trying to attack something called Battleground Texas, which I gather is doing voter registration in the state, which God knows is much needed.  In a slight of hand they were referencing a story by Austin-American political reporter, Jonathan Tilove, where he had quoted my advice in the recent issue of Social Policy to all organizers and organizations doing this work to be ever vigilant of their “gotcha” tactics, and then, in order to join Nugent on the “red meat” trail, calling Battleground Texas in their video, the “new” ACORN.  Of course I wouldn’t know these Battleground Texas folks any more than the man from Mars, but accuracy was never the issue or interest of O’Keefe and his imitators.  Their mission and method is to muddle by manipulating into their message the litany of code words that communicate hate and division. 

The formula of communist plus ACORN plus Obama is hard for any front row, drooling, fire breathing rightwing dragon to miss, especially when it is pounded home so regularly.   Ted Nugent didn’t invent it and neither did O’Keefe and his buddies, but as Nugent says, it’s only his “heroes” that can stop it, and that’s people like Abbot, Ted Cruz, the Texas Senator, Governor Rick Perry, and the legions of other Republican leaders who have unleashed this hate throughout the land and refuse to curb it.   Saner voices need to be heard on the right, because this kind of sensationalism increasingly seems less like an encouragement to vote, than a coded call to violence.  It has to stop.