Cliff Kincaid

Karl Rove, whose American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking President Obama’s economic record without avail, has become something of a punching bag for a defeated and embittered Religious Right. Shortly after the election, Gary Bauer faulted Rove for focusing on the economy rather than on abortion rights and marriage equality and radio host Janet Mefferd expressed concern that “we didn’t even talk much about radical Islam.” A few days later, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios even accused Rove of moderating the GOP’s previous focus on anti-gay policies.

Today, Joel Gilbert, director of the widely distributed anti-Obama movie “Dreams From My Real Father,” joined the pile-on. In an interview with Renew America’s Cliff Kincaid, Gilbert argued that Rove made a fatal mistake by focusing his attacks on the economy rather than on Gilbert’s theory that the president’s real father was communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism,” Gilbert said.

"I heard complaints from Rove's conservative donors four weeks in advance of the election," filmmaker Joel Gilbert told Accuracy in Media. "They kept asking, 'where is the money being spent?'" The questions intensified after Obama's victory and the Democrats achieved a larger 55-45 majority in the Senate.

Gilbert, who directed the documentary "Dreams from My Real Father," about Obama's Marxist roots, notes that Rove had argued to conservative donors that the winning strategy for Republicans was to place ads focusing on the poor economy.

Gilbert's film, which was distributed to millions of voters and argued that Obama's real biological and ideological father was Communist Party USA propagandist Frank Marshall Davis, attempted to expose Obama's character and background. But Rove, Romney and Republican leaders did not want to raise these issues. In fact, Rove had argued that calling Obama a socialist or left-winger would backfire.

Gilbert argued that Obama was a pop-culture phenomenon with a high "likability" factor and that "Voters perceived Obama as a nice man with an inspiring family story." The right strategy, he says, was to expose Obama's Marxist views, the role of Frank Marshall Davis in molding Obama's political philosophy, and Obama's questionable statements about his own upbringing.

Gilbert says, "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism."

Gilbert’s film, meanwhile, is on record as having “revolted” focus groups of swing voters and disgusted at least one Florida voter so much that he decided to vote for the president.

Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival, who recently led the “Lenin and Sharia” conference on the supposed links between Communism and radical Islamists, today joined Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio to once again defend Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim witch hunt. But before they could get to that, the two attacked conservative activist Grover Norquist, whom Gaffney has consistently demonized as a Muslim Brotherhood agent. Gaffney said that his ten part “Muslim Brotherhood in America” course proves that Norquist and his Brotherhood allies are copying the “kind of subversive, clandestine operations that the Communists ran in their heyday in this country”:

Gaffney: Cliff Kincaid, one of the things that jumps out at you as you look at this material in the course and Grover’s friends in the Islamist Brotherhood infrastructure in the United States is how closely it seems to track, almost maps perfectly really, to the kind of subversive, clandestine operations that the Communists ran in their heyday in this country. You’ve developed a tremendous expertise on that subject and I wonder what particularly in your own program about Lenin and Sharia, did you find much evidence of the connection being more than coincidental there?

Kincaid: We did, Frank. This is where Grover’s conduct leaves me almost speechless. I mean here’s a guy who did recognize during the Reagan years the Communist threat and who now seemingly can’t see that we’re up against a global Islamic terrorist threat operating through front groups. That’s exactly what the Communists did.

Later, Gaffney claimed that John McCain and John Boehner, who along with many other Republicans denounced Bachmann’s witch hunt, were “sort of parroting the Muslim Brotherhood line” by defending Huma Abedin from Bachmann’s attacks. Kincaid recommended the House restore the Internal Security Committee, which was originally called the House Un-American Activities Committee, and said that neither Abedin nor President Obama could pass a background check:

Gaffney: They’re not simply imitating what the Communists did, the Communists trained them in how to run what the Brotherhood calls civilization jihad. As you know this is not necessarily terrorism, at least at the moment it’s a pre-violent form of creating the conditions of the battlefield that will enable the violent kind of jihad ultimately to be very successful. Cliff, one other thing that I’m struck by that seems to be an important parallel and it brings us back to the Grover Norquist element here; we’ve also been hearing of course from John McCain and Speaker of the House John Boehner lately, among others, sort of parroting the Muslim Brotherhood line on a number of issues, notably the revelations that the deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, Huma Abedin, has extensive personal as well as family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Give us a sense of how this is a throwback to the earlier revelations, among others, by J. Edgar Hoover of what the Communists have done on the other side.

Kincaid: You would think that somebody like a McCain who is of course a war hero who came out of the Hanoi Hilton would understand the similarities between what the Communists have tried to do to us and now what the global Islamists are effectively doing to us. Yet we noticed, Frank, a couple years ago that he seemed to go haywire on this whole thing, after warning about the Muslim Brotherhood he suddenly shows in Washington at an event honoring Al Jazeera and then he shows up making these comments on the Senate Floor in criticism of the conservative members of the House who have raised concerns about security problems at the State Department and other agencies.

This is something that requires frankly the Congress to take a harder look; I wish we could go beyond just asking the inspectors general to look at this problem. We have long at America’s Survival advocated the return of the House and the Senate, but they can do it in the House, of the House Internal Security Committee to issue subpoenas, to bring in and require testimony from these people, to get to the bottom of it in public hearings as to the security problems in the State Department. Who gave Huma Abedin a security clearance? Does she in fact have one? We don’t even know that. I do know that I’ve taken a look at the standard form 86, 127 pages long that she was supposed to fill out and if she had filled it out, and let’s face it even the President couldn’t pass a basic background check, but if she had filled it out truthfully she wouldn’t be in that position today.

Gaffney: Amen, Cliff Kincaid, you are as always a great, great authority on these issues.

Earlier this month we reported on an upcoming conference that seemed exceptionally crazy even by right-wing standards, as it plans to focus on the purported connections between Communism and Sharia law and the claim that Barack Obama’s real father is Frank Marshall Davis, the late civil rights activist and a friend of Obama’s grandfather. Conference organizer Cliff Kincaid, who also heads Accuracy In Media and America’s Survival, appeared on Secure Freedom Radio last week with Fred Grandy, the former Republican congressman and actor (‘Gopher’ from The Love Boat) who was filling in for host Frank Gaffney, to promote the summit and push the charge that Davis is Obama’s real father and still, even though he passed away in 1987, “has an influence over our President.” But this new Birther saga undermines the classical Birther conspiracy that Gaffney now pushes on Secure Freedom Radio, in which Obama’s mother travels with Obama, Sr. to Kenya (for some reason) to give birth.

Grandy: Another one of your panelists at your event next week is actually going to be trying to make the case that perhaps—and I’ve heard this rumor before—that Frank Marshall Davis was more than just a surrogate father to Barack Obama, he may well have been this guy’s real father and Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., to some degree, is merely a minor influence in this kid’s life. How much credibility do you put into that?

Kincaid: I put a lot into it now that I’ve seen Joel Gilbert’s film, it’s called Dreams from My Real Father. It’s an incredible film. He’s going to show excerpts, he’s going to talk about his research. He’s expanded upon what we and Paul Kengor have done and I think it deserves a fair hearing. Now, whether or not he was a real father or not, the fact is Frank Marshall Davis has an influence over our President and that’s the critical issue but if indeed if he was Obama’s real father and the comparison’s photos are striking then we’ve got even more of a mystery behind this guy in the Oval Office.