This may have been diaried a lot already, but I think it bears repeating, and Frank Rich's column today did a great job of summarizing the ugly behavior that the McCain-Palin campaign has instigated by its recent tactics.
In particular, Rich points out that Palin has not been asked publicly to account for quoting the anti-Semite Westbrook Pegler in her Republican National Convention Speech:
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin's convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was "regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man." In the '60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: "Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls."
Source:
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
As you may recall, Palin said in her speech:
A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.
Rich correctly points out that no one has publicly confronted Palin to ask her to account for why she quoted Pegler with such reverence. Or why the writer whose quotation was used was left unnamed.
Perhaps this is why:
"A writer observed, 'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.' And I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman."
That unnamed "writer" was unnamed for a reason. It was Westbrook Pegler, an openly racist columnist who wrote of wishing for the assassinations of FDR—and Robert Kennedy. Pegler's xenophobic, red-baiting politics were so extreme (he described Jews as "instinctively sympathetic to Communism, however outwardly respectable they appeared") that he was booted from the John Birch Society. In 1963, Pegler wrote that it was "clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry." And, by the way, Pegler described Truman as a "hater," and Truman called Pegler a "guttersnipe." High praise, indeed.
Source:
PALIN-DRONES
Another story on this quotation is here at Huffington Post.
The bottom line is not that Palin didn't use Pegler's name. The bottom line is that someone decided to put the quotation in there and did not seem to mind dignifying Pegler by adding him to a national convention speech.
It is time for someone to confront Palin on this quotation, given that she herself has been quite willing to go after Obama in a way that appears to be attracting sentiments with which Pegler would have held great sympathy. Why did Palin quote a writer who called for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy? And if her speechwriters did it, why did they do it?
It seems that the media is starting to probe the atmosphere of race-baiting that is rising around the McCain-Palin campaign. I hope that the decision to honor Pegler by quoting him in a convention speech will also draw the spotlight that it deserves.
Update
The Huffington Post has an article out stating that, according to Time magazine, McCain volunteers are being trained specifically to smear Obama as a terrorist.
With so much at stake, and time running short, [Jeffrey] Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.
Sources:
In Battleground Virginia, a Tale of Two Ground Games
Virginia GOP Head Tells Volunteers: Compare Obama To Osama
I think there should be a detailed accounting of these tactics, but I also think it is intended as a distraction and should not be given too much airplay. When Obama focuses on his promises of hope and change, and speaks about the economy and about how he will improve the country, he wins. I think we need to strike a balance between calling out McCain-Palin on this hate-training and not letting it distract Obama into sinking to their level. So far, Obama appears to be handling the issue quite deftly.