There has been a lot of recent coverage about the "hate-filled" rallies that McCain and company have hosted in recent days and I was wondering if McCain gave any thought to how history would view his campaign in the future. With all of the anger and vitriol directed toward Obama, I wondering why hasn't at least denounced some of the courser language, some of which have attracted the attention of law enforcement. In a recent column by Dana Milbank from the Washington Post, he described some of the ugliness that he witnessed.
From Milbank's column:
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."
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
The McCain campaign is trying to describe Milbank's description as a aberration but now this is becoming the new meme of McCain's rallies. Some of McCain's supporters appear backward and irrational.
History is never kind to leaders who pander to our baser natures and those who only work to achieve short term gain are frequently derided. Do any of us believe that Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms were intellects or held some type of grand insight? I never fully comprehended why he didn't support the MLK holiday and he readily admits that his support for the confederate flag was nonsense but does he understand that others are indirectly affected by those decisions because he is giving voice and legitimacy to those who spout hate. Palin, whose is pretty young, should at least think that if she were to run again for national office, this campaign is not providing her with the legacy necessary to run in a diverse nation.
But, I suppose that their campaign must be taking a page out of the Klan's playbook, "How to stir up racist innuendo and influence jackasses." Does he honestly believe that he could govern effectively after spreading all of these lies and hate? Well, as my grandmother says, "The devil is a liar!"