The GOP's lack of respect for the presidency (if a democrat and especially an african-american occupies the office)

Washington Post

Dana Milbank Opinion Writer

Nothing sweet about heckling Obama in the Rose Garden

What does conservative pundit Tucker Carlson have to do with an outhouse in Montana?

More than you might think.

Over the weekend, the Montana Republican Party proved wrong those of us who believe our political discourse has gone down the toilet. In fact, our political discourse has gone to a place where there isn’t even plumbing.

Outside the Montana GOP convention in Missoula stood an outhouse labeled “Obama Presidential Library” and painted as though it had been shot full of holes, according to the local paper. Inside, a fake birth certificate for “Barack Hussein Obama” was stamped with an expletive referring to bovine droppings. A message in the structure gave fake phone numbers for Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi “For a Good Time.”

The state party chairman, Will Deschamps, said that the structure was not in “real good taste. We do have a president of the United States, and we have to honor that.” But he also dismissed the matter as a “sideshow” and “not something I’m going to agonize over.”

But the outhouse is not a sideshow. It is something we should all be agonizing over.

There are always going to be nuts at both ends of the political spectrum who do and say ugly things. Usually, leaders denounce the vile elements among them and try to distance themselves.

Under the Obama presidency, however, conservative leaders are encouraging the vulgarity — if not joining in by heckling the president from the House floor. The Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, recently shared a stage with Donald Trump only hours after the buffoon tycoon had again floated the disproved allegation that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Among many such episodes before that, Romney failed to challenge a supporter who suggested to him that Obama “should be tried for treason.”

Conservative leaders may believe it benefits them that one in six voters still thinks Obama is Muslim. But when conservatives sanction the debasement of Obama, they are debasing the presidency itself.
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