By Molly Worthen
For the past three and a half years, Republicans have struggled to explain a great conundrum. If they are the party of authentic America with a mystical connection to the will of the people, then how, exactly, did Barack Obama get elected president?
Some Republicans have come up with an answer that allows them to avoid facing the unpleasant reality of their own party’s failures: Obama must be a great deceiver. He won the White House by subterfuge.
Claims that Obama concealed nonnative birth or faith in Islam failed to gain mainstream traction, but conservatives like Sean Hannity were more successful in labeling Obama as covertly “anti-American” based on his association with the incendiary pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. By this logic, Obama was a paragon of Christian piety. He “savored” every word on Sunday mornings and would surely govern by these traitorous principles: his beliefs were dangerous because, well, he really believed them.