By Jeffrey Page

In the 20 months of the Obama Administration, the president and his allies in the House and Senate have been called every name in the book. The right’s sliming of President Obama has been constant, significant and, oh yes, breathtakingly false. Never forget the Bush factotum who declared that Sept. 11 occurred on Obama’s watch and that he is somehow responsible for the tragedy.

I’ve heard the president called a Marxist and I’ve heard him called a fascist – occasionally in the same sentence. He has been condemned as a socialist. He has been dismissed as a presidential pretender because he was not born in the United States, which of course is precisely where he was born. (Slight digression: If anyone in the idiotic birther movement raised a peep about John McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone, would he please step forward? And if anyone in the movement said anything about Mitt Romney’s father George – born in Mexico – when he sought the Republican nomination in 1968, could he raise his hand?)

The latest lie about President Obama is that he is a Muslim. The most intelligent response to this was as follows: “I wait for the day – perhaps when my young grandchildren are adults? – that when an official of the United States government is ‘believed to be’ or ‘accused of being’ Muslim, the response will be: ‘And?’”

The problem for Democrats is that this retort didn’t come from Obama or Pelosi or Reid or anyone else with a national constituency, but in a letter to the editor of The Times from someone named Susan Klee of Berkeley.

The left needs an army of Susan Klees, intelligent, fearless and articulate, but also angry and with runaway mouths. People on the left have been polite, well mannered, and cordial for far too long – and the right has cleaned their clocks. It’s time to fight back in a way that’s as forceful as the Republicans have managed ever since Barack Obama was elected.

Actually this form of defense and counterattack should have been instituted the afternoon of Obama’s inauguration. But the left was too busy being civil and accommodating and looking for bipartisanship. Ever try to find bipartisanship with a water moccasin? It was just four days before Obama took the oath of office that Limbaugh actually expressed his hope that Obama would fail – and got a free ride. Any outrage with Limbaugh’s bizarre view of citizenship and Americanism and love of country faded quickly.

Sure he’s obnoxious, and the left needs a couple of people just like him – people who are loud, relentless, and who have an audience that stretches beyond the Upper West Side. It needs its own Ann Coulter, its own Limbaugh, its own Sarah Palin. And it needs its own Newt Gingrich, someone who is always there, always available, always ready to comment. In 1994, Gingrich’s constant presence got the right the unobtainable – control of Congress for the first time in years. And it got the speakership for Gingrich.

Now it looks like the right may seize Congress again.

Hey, it’s 2 in the morning, time to take off the gloves, and ask the right wing to step outside and around back to the parking lot.

Would be nice if Obama led the way.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

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