The McCain rallies have gotten ugly, but McCain has done his best to halt the ugliness. In a recent one, a woman stood up and spoke ignorantly about Obama being an untrustworthy "Arab". McCain interrupted her to say, "No, no, no. He's a decent, family man with whom I happen to have serious disagreements." And there were cheers to that correction.
So there is certainly ugliness, but there is some fight against it from Republicans, even the dyed in the wool Republicans.
4 comments:
No doubt, McCain has tried to back down from this stuff. I tend to see that as meaning McCain's not stone cold evil, and don't give him a lot of credit for that.
I think it is true that John McCain is not George Wallace. I just don't think in 2008 that is exactly high praise. I mean, people ran for the office of President on the doctrine that some Black people were property, too.
I can't give McCain too much credit for trying futilely to hold back the mob when he and his campaign were largely responsible for the premeditated strategy which unleashed it in the first place.
There may be some mitigation that perhaps they did not know how effective their baiting would be, and now that it's out of control they are trying to dial it back a bit. My more cynical side says that they are only backing down because they saw that it was hurting them in the polls.
And they have been only half-hearted in their attempt to backpedal. Sure, McCain directly contradicted the woman who thought Obama was an arab. But there was another event where McCain's Virginia chair explicitly said that there was a connection between Obama and bin Laden. McCain refused to denounce or criticize it. Now whatever, I'm not playing the "you're responsible for all your crazy surrogates" game, but considering that the dude was reading off McCain's script, I can't exculpate McCain either.
Here's the weird difference between 2008 and 2004. When Bushco unloaded on Kerry, Kerry folded like wet tissue paper. When McCain went nasty, the backlash scalded him and Obama's all but unscathed. I'm not sure what changed. Was it that Bush had no honor but nastiness cuts against McCain's brand of integrity? Is Obama just that much of a cooler player? Is it the media, the economy, the fact that Obama is winning? I dunno, but it is crazy different.
I think the press wants Obama to win. I think journalists are really pissed about Palin, and feel betrayed by McCain. That's a huge part of this. Also, Obama has a very real positive story to tell. He has put his vision for American out there in a compelling way. I think that helps too.
Liam, you're like a conspiracy theorist: if evidence surfaces that Bush sent an email to Cheney on 9/10 that "everything is preparation for operation tower drop", well that's evidence that he knew about 9/11. Likewise, if Bush sent no emails to Cheney on 9/10, that's evidence that Bush was keeping "radio silence", and *that's* sinister evidence of a conspiracy of silence. IN other words, to the sufficiently paranoid, all evidence is evidence of conspiracy.
John McCain dressed down a confused woman and wouldn't let her, amidst boos directed at him, that she was wrong and that Obama is a decent man. To you, that's evidence that McCain is evil... or something. To the sufficiently partisan, all actions are partisan.
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