by Teh Nutroots | The thing is: when was the last time this sort of thing was directed at a candidate for the presidency, hmmmm?
A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said....“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said. (Citizen Times.com)
For one thing, think about the innocent bear.
Then step back and think of what these people are trying to convey to have gone to those lengths. At a George Fox University in Oregon someone hanged an effigy of Obama. (Oregon News) In the meantime, the GOP shills are still trying to argue that Palin and McCain haven't unleashed the worldwind. In North Carolina, Rep.Robin Hayes---in a burst of transparent irony his supporters are too stupid to recognize---accused Obama of inciting "class warfare." (TPM) He also said, “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” (TPM) Yeah, because my 20 years at the same job were just a diversion and Damozel's lefty (i.e., Jesus-based) Christianity doesn't count. You know who hates Jesus and has forgotten everything he ever said or did? People who say things like that to stir up the mob.
Now the McCain campaign---obviously desperate---is planning to ratchet up the hate. Hey, maybe that'll work. I guess this is an official acknowledgment is that hate is his only weapon. Does he ever stop to think what his presidency will look like if his tactics succeed?
Self-respecting conservatives are deserting McCain's disgraceful campaign by the boatload.
For example, lifelong conservative Ken Adelman has now declared for Obama.
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself. (New Yorker)
Why is Adelman deserting the GOP? Why, for the same reasons as all the other high-profile Republicans and Republican newspaper.
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.(New Yorker)
I don't think he needs to worry about Obama governing from the center, as he says. He hopes Obama will be "dare I say it, Clintonesque"). No worries there, mate---that's what progressives like me know and have had to come to terms with.
In the meantime, here's John McCain, who I guess doesn't care any more how his campaign affects the country generally or Barack Obama specifically. Just as he blamed his negative campaigning on Obama's refusal to appear at townhalls, McCain seems to be working to convince himself that the comments of John Lewis---who is not, and never has been,
Barack Obama---justify him in bringing up angry black preacher Jeremiah Wright.
It reminds me of someone I once knew who said that because his house had been burgled (perpetrators unknown), he wasn't going to donate money anymore to a charity that helped minorities. If that's the way "they" behave, then that's all "they" deserve----because black people are fungible and share a brain, I guess. Disgusting:
John McCain's campaign manager says he is reconsidering using Barack Obama's relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue during the election's closing weeks.
In an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt's radio program, Davis said that circumstances had changed since John McCain initially and unilaterally took Obama's former pastor off the table. The Arizona Republican, Davis argued, had been jilted by the remarks of Rep. John Lewis, who compared recent GOP crowds to segregationist George Wallace's rallies. And, as such, the campaign was going to "rethink" what was in and out of political bounds. (HuffPost)
So much for nobly taking the high road. It's all John Lewis's fault and the McCain campaign might as well be just as racist and mob-inciting as they've been accused of being!
"Look, John McCain has told us a long time ago before this campaign ever got started, back in May, I think, that from his perspective, he was not going to have his campaign actively involved in using Jeremiah Wright as a wedge in this campaign," he said late last week. "Now since then, I must say, when Congressman Lewis calls John McCain and Sarah Palin and his entire group of supporters, fifty million people strong around this country, that we're all racists and we should be compared to George Wallace and the kind of horrible segregation and evil and horrible politics that was played at that time, you know, that you've got to rethink all these things. And so I think we're in the process of looking at how we're going to close this campaign. We've got 19 days, and we're taking serious all these issues." (HuffPost)
John Cole is taking all these issues serious too---by incredulously noting:
Is there anyone out there who honestly thought these shitbirds were not going to trot Wright out the last two weeks? Anyone? And that the justification for it is what someone else said, not the Obama campaign, is just priceless.
I have said this over and over and over again- the McCain campaign is being run by wingnut bloggers.
I am not sure what the strategy here is. That Americans generally are secretly as racist and as dumb as the people who attend Palin's rallies? That it might not win over many independents, but it will ensure that the crazy base turn out to the polls? Who knows?
Even before Davis took to the Hugh Hewitt Show, it was clear that members of McCain's inner circle were pining for him to use some of Wright's more inflammatory quotes to hammer away at Obama. Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol that she didn't know "why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said." (HuffPost)
Really, Sarah? Really? What about this then? Because the following remarks are attributed to the late Joe Vogler, founder of the Alaskan Independence Party to which Palin's husband belonged for seven years. Are you appalled by the following?
The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.
"And I won't be buried under their damn flag," Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. "I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."
At another point, Volger advocated renouncing allegiance to the United States. In the course of denouncing Federal regulation over land, he said:
"And then you get mad. And you say, the hell with them. And you renounce allegiance, and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life to Alaska." (TPM)
If you're aghast at the levels of racist fury expressed by some McCain supporters, how about the hypocrisy of Palin in pushing McCain to remind America of Reverend Wright's anti-American rhetoric?
I don't know whether those sorts of tactics will really work. I guess we'll see. If they do succeed, and John McCain wins what he's determined to get at whatever cost, it's interesting to imagine how he expects to be received by all the sane people who formerly liked him. I don't think people are going to be in a forgiving mood.
In other words: he might win, but what will he have won? Certainly not the respect or support of "real Americans" (the decent, hard-working, courageous, non-hate-driven kind).
Whatever happens, I do think we can look forward to the end of the GOP as it has been since Rove. Most of the Republicans I know aren't crazy; they just have a childlike faith that we can pay off the cost of the Iraq War and Bush's other depredations without paying more taxes. They certainly don't share Palin's values or the "values," if you want to call them that, of the angry fringe.
Pity them. Would you want to share a tent, however big, with the assholes who shot the bear, hanged Obama in effigy, or called Obama an "Arab" and a "Muslin" (sic)? For that matter, would you---not being a wingnut---want to share a tent with Sarah Palin?
I don't see how the sane sort of Republican can remain in denial much longer. Also at Balloon Juice, Michael D wrote an important compendium of racist Republican rhetoric called "The New Definition of the Republican Party."
You might be excused if you said placing Obama’s face on a $10 food stamp with a bucket of fried chicken, watermelon, ribs, and Kool-Aid was an isolated act.
When a major right-wing network calls Michelle Obama, “Obama’s Baby Mama,” you could dismiss it as as an overzealous producer who just thought it was funny and didn’t mean it to say that black women are just baby machines for black men. You could, I suppose.
You might even get a pass if you thought a Web site that depicted Obama and the word “Waterboard Him” was just created by an obscure group that didn’t represent all Republicans – although you would be wrong.
If a picture of Obama was Photoshopped to make him look a little bit like Osama Bin Laden, you could pass it off as the work of a few idiots on the right. It could be, right?
Supporters who carry racist Obama Monkey Dolls to your rallys are people who don’t represent your campaign. You could argue that.
Of course, this is just a moron on the fringe, right?
What about when a high-level Republican fundraiser sends out an email that includes a joke with the punchline, if an airplane carrying Obama and his wife were blown up “it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”? Sure, you could pass it off as the act of a random dumbass.
If, in response to your question, “Who is Barack Obama?” someone yelled “Terrorist!” you could say that was just one idiot in the crowd and was not indicative of the general sentiment. It’s plausible.
As he says, a point is going to be reached when Republicans are going to have to concern that the GOP has become too much fringe, too little substance.
Then what do you do, if you want to have one shred of credibility left?
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Meanwhile, as the Economic Crash Continues, What Are Furious Conservatives Angry About?
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