Ben Smith at Politico has a very interesting article up about the woman who organized McCain's infamous conference call with former Hillary/now McCain supporters last week.
Politico link
Well color me shocked, but Smith has outed this organizer and Hillaryis44 regular as a longtime racist.
According to Smith, Paula Abeles, who initiated the teleconference between McCain and Hillary supporters, first gained infamy back in 2003 when she worked on behalf of white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings.
According to Smith:
Abeles first made the news in 2003, when she and her husband, then-Monticello Association President Nat Abeles, led the fight to keep members of the Hemings family -- descendants of Jefferson slave and, some historians believe, mistress Sally Hemmings -- out of a gathering of the Monticello Association, which is made up of lineal descendants of the third president.
Abeles is a long-time Internet troll, whose 2003 exploits included masquerading as a 67-year-old black woman in an Internet chat room to keep Hemming's descendants out of the 2003 Jefferson family reunion. Abeles kept up this ruse for eight months on a Yahoo! message board created for Hemmings' relatives.
"It might have been somewhat unethical," Abeles a Washington, D.C. resident told the AP at the time. "It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering."
The McCain campaign, of course, had no comment.
Kudos to Smith for offering proof of what I've long suspected: some of Hillary's bitter dead enders are using their "outrage" to cloak their own racism.
UPDATE: Geekesque, below, suggested adding some additional context about Saturday's teleconference. It appears that in order to cater to the nutjob "Hillary Republican" contingent, McCain may well risk alienating his rightwing base...a base that (inexplicably, IMO) already sees him as a closet liberal.
After Saturday's teleconference, McCain made some interesting promises to the handful of assembled rabid fans and above-mentioned racists, who organized the call. According to multiple sources, McCain insinuated he would appoint moderate judges and even looked kindly upon civil unions for gays.
From Slate:
Suckers! Part XVIII: John McCain met privately with some Clinton supporters in the diehard group Party Unity My Ass, and tried to wobble his way into their hearts:
"He stayed for a good almost half hour afterwards shaking hands, listening to our concerns, talking to us," said PUMA founder Will Bower, who said he thought many of the people there would vote for McCain.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina stayed to mingle with the crowd, whose members also included Clinton backer Harriet Christian, made momentarily famous on YouTube for getting ejected from the Rules & Bylaws press area.
Bower said he'd liked McCain's answer on judges, in which he "pointed out that he supported Bill Clinton with both Ginsberg and Breyer." [E.A.]
And, again, from Politico:
Another person who was present, but asked not to be named to avoid conflict with fellow Democrats, said he'd pressed a McCain staffer on McCain's position on same-sex marriage.
The staffer "said it was the same as [John] Kerry's position," he said
I'm sure all of this will be welcome news to the GOP's hard right, many of whom were already planning to stay home in November.
UPDATE 2: Those who are wondering why John McCain is wooing this small cadre of unstable, racist and fanatical "supporters" should check out the thousands of angry posts from conservatives at the NRCC blog.
Here are just three of the more than 2,000 comments there. I assure you all, they ARE representative:
McCain is about to find out what all of his aisle crossings and all of his "principaled stands contrary to party doctrine" are good for. The MSM will reward his pandering with kind words--until election time. Then it will toss him under the bus, just like it did with Bush senior. And you know what? I'm okay with that. He became radioactive to me with McCain-Feingold. That was the deal breaker.
The question is, where do we go now that the GOP has abandoned us. The moment is ripe for a leader to step up and change history. Who will that individual be, and what will the name of his party be?
McCain has secured my vote for the Libertian Party.
Congratulations - you guys have finally made me wake up. The last president I voted FOR was Ronald Reagan. Since then it's been the lesser of two evils - the republican - every 4 years. I keep hoping for a better choice next election. No more. Starting this year I'll be "throwing my vote away". I'm voting for somebody with some conservative principles. If I wanted gullible warming legislation, amnesty for illegals and more government meddling I'd have VOTED for a democrat. What's the matter with you people? You DESERVE to lose!