During last night's debate, McCain crowed, "Let me just say, categorically, I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies."
So that includes the guy with the monkey? Even he had enough sense to dump his stuffed insult on a nearby kid when being filmed by television crews. McCain/Palin rallies are a looking glass into their campaign. They are inciting an unhinged base that calls for political assassination and domestic terrorism. And McCain's moral equivalency card trick--pretending that people calling him a liar is the same as people yelling "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" and "Traitor" and the n-word--is beyond insulting. It's complicite with the hatred they're harvesting.
McCain also said he has repudiated every person who said something unacceptable. He hasn't rebuked a single one of these rally-goers, though hundreds of thousands of us have seen them online. McCain sulks about Obama not repudiating Congressman Lewis for saying the McCain/Palin campaign is "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse," which is true. Congressman Lewis also said:
George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights.
No one needs to apologize for what Mr. Lewis said. He is speaking the uncomfortable truth. It's so uncomfortable, everyone is quick to soft pedal it. Each time McCain demands that Obama repudiate Lewis, we should demand that McCain go on Limbaugh's show and repudiate every one of these documented hate-spouters.
"Let me just say, categorically, I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies."
McCain, 15 October 2008 debate
Here are some of those people:
Folks yelling "baby killer" and "Barry Hussein Obama" and
worse at a rally last weekend in PA:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Folks calling Obama a terrorist at a recent rally
outside of Cleveland, Ohio:
http://www.youtube.com/...
A disturbing video broadcast on Al Jazeera from
another recent Ohio rally, with more charges that
Obama is a terrorist and unabashed racism:
http://www.youtube.com/...
a compilation from one recent week's worth of rallies,
by Robert Greenwald:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Tell me that's not the sort of haywire emotion that leads to bombing churches and violence against the innocent. McCain/Palin are wholly accountable for creating this atmosphere. I'm not saying all Republicans are bigots. I'm saying it's clear that all bigots will be voting Republican this November. I would find it very hard to be proud of that.