GOP: Community organizer = Scary Black Man

One of my co-workers, who watched last night's Republican convention against his better judgment, was baffled by the constant jabs at Obama for being a "community organizer." (My co-worker remarked, "Wasn't Jesus Christ sort of a community organizer?") But, as we all know by now, if the Republicans seem inordinately fond of a certain phrase, there's a reason for it. And it won't be a nice reason.

A commenter at Daily Kos has found the explanation, and not surprisingly, it involves Rush Limbaugh:

I had the misfortunate to sit in a cab recently with Rush blaring on radio. I told driver switch the station or lose your tip after hearing Rush going off the wall screetch about community organizer = radicals.

They are reframing community organizing as VERY LEFT WING, filled with -gasp- RADICALS.

It's part of their "Obama's too radically liberal for [the] country" meme.

Billmon adds:

The pieces start to fit together a bit: Rush blasts out the message in its raw form to the true believers, and then they dog whistle back to it at the convention. Classic.

The two theories (race or radicalism?) aren't incompatible, of course: It looks like the game plan is to keep trying to paint Obama as the scary black radical[.]

Update: For the record, Paul Waldman (and others) predicted the GOP's Scary Radical Black Man strategy back in March.