ANTICHRISTS COME IN ALL COLORS

DougJ asks:

would the Tea Party have come into being if Hillary were president? Would the Republican party have gone as stark, raving mad without a black president?

One point he makes in favor of a "no" answer:

Maybe the biggest difference between anti-Clinton hatred and anti-Obama hatred is that anti-Clinton hatred was driven by elites. The Village hated Clinton for being Big Mac-eating, blowjobs-from-interns-getting white trash, whereas their criticism of Obama is more the usual where's-my-pony....

In other words, the anti-Obama hatred is organic in a way that the anti-Clinton hatred was not. And there's nothing more organic than racism.

I think there would have been just as much hate; as evidence, I'd recommend looking past Obama and the Clintons and considering what happened to John Kerry in 2004. A rich white guy with a preppy affect was brought low by the Swift boat story, an elaborate conspiracy narrative that rivals the birth certificate/Kenyan anti-colonialism Obama disinformation myths. In other words, these people will develop a mass hysteria about anyone who seems to threaten GOP/Galtian overlord dominance of America.

And I'm not sure I agree that Clinton craziness was more elite-driven. Yes, the Sally Quinn crowd put the boot in, as did New York Times reporters on Whitewater, but the checks written to get the really baroque Clinton stuff unearthed came from the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife -- the '90s equivalent of the Koch brothers. And the Free Republic crowd wallowed in Clinton-hate all through Bill's presidency (and in fact, right up until the moment in spring 2008 when Limbaugh and Kristol said "Everybody skate counterclockwise!" and they all decided they liked Hillary because she'd become the anti-Obama). The Freepers specifically loved Bubba-bashing Clinton, alomst as if they were defining him as the white equivalent of a n****r. (Oh, and how they cackled at the reference to Clinton as "the first black president.")

I don't think there's anything organic about any of this, except to the extent that a fired-up mob given license to unleash undiluted hate by rabble-rousing figures of authority is organic. It all comes primarily from ideology-driven overlords -- the Kochs, Scaife, Murdoch. It's all top down. And it will be directed at the next Democratic president -- if there ever is one again -- even if that president is paler than Edgar and Johnny Winter.