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Republicans have created this completely fictional President: his name is Barack X, and he’s an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who’s coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe — or worse yet, Saul Alinsky!

And this is how politics has changed: you used to have to run against an actual candidate. But now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. That’s how Bush won in 2004 — by running against John Kerry, a French war criminal.

And speaking of Bush, I know conservatives are saying ‘Oh Bill, come on — Democrats did the same thing to him.’ No. Say what you will about the left’s hating of Bush, (but) at least we were hating on the real guy. We didn’t invent a boogeyman who tanked the economy, took us to war on false pretenses, and tortured prisoners — that was the actual guy.

But run down the list of complaints about ‘Fantasy Obama’. He ‘wants to raise your taxes,’ even though he’s lowered them; ‘confiscate your guns,’ even though he’s never mentioned it; and ‘read terrorists their rights’ — yeah, like he did Tuesday in Somalia.

…You see, the difference is the Republicans’ hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling on what he might do; what he’s thinking; what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did. What Bush was thinking didn’t matter — because he wasn’t.

— BILL MAHER, Real Time