With their campaign tanking across the board along with the economy, the McCain campaign is taking off the gloves, as the say, or, perhaps, the hoods
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
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The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
6 months ago, I figured that this would be a desperately ugly and mean campaign twinged with not so subtle racist overtones. I have been pleased that, despite some exceptions, it hasn't been as bad as I had feared. Now, with the race slipping away from them, I'm afraid that the racist underbelly of the GOP is going to be roused once again. This is just the beginning. The next four weeks are going to be disgusting.
I guess we now know why the McCain campaign wanted to keep the press from mingling with their supporters at those rallies in Florida yesterday, which just goes to show that this wasn't an accident. This wasn't just some racist wackjobs infiltrating their events. The campaign is stoking this crap and they are doing so for a reason.
It's their last best shot and it's all they've got left. |
