Tancredo storms off set after Markos confronts him on veterans health care

Tancredo, who asked for a deferment from service in Vietnam, due to depression, tries to lecture Moulitsas on the views of veterans. Turns out... Moulitsas is the one of them who actually IS a veteran. Too much for Tancredo to take.

Please go out and bring back a real political party. We need two.

The Republican Party, with Scozzava's withdrawal from the race in New York State, is now who we thought they were. Religious extremists, racially motivated, no different than religious extremist movements in other countries of the world. As I hope they reject those extremists, so do I hope we reject these.

I look forward to either the return of a truly fiscally conservative-based Republican Party, or the replacement of this Edsel version with another party who follows those beliefs. This country needs two truly representative parties. Not one party and an extremist mob threatening, in turn 1) secession; 2) potential military coups; and other like seditionist policies. It does this country no good.

What they will find is what they have been railing against. The demographics of this country are changing. There is no stopping that, and it serves no purpose to be afraid of it. Once the Republican Party can embrace the demographic changes in the U.S. Population and return to what they believed in once, rather than a policy based on villainizing everyone that is simply "not like them", then they will have a chance. Until then, they will be standing on an ever-shrinking iceberg in an ocean that laps closer and closer to its edge.

I await the comments to come that, as I said of this group, move to villainize my comments rather than delineate their proposed policies.

Fox News' rhetoric echoes Ailes' long history of race-baiting

SUMMARY: Under its president, Roger Ailes, Fox News routinely employs racially charged appeals to foment opposition to the Obama administration and other progressive figures, such as Glenn Beck's comments that President Obama is a "racist" and "has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." Before launching the Fox News Channel, Ailes worked as a media consultant for several Republican campaigns where evidence shows he similarly appealed to racial fears and biases for political gain, and as executive producer for Rush Limbaugh's television show, during which Limbaugh made several controversial statements.

Ailes' political and media history is littered with race-based appeals

As Nixon campaign consultant, Ailes reportedly looked for a "Wallaceite cab-driver" to bring up race at televised town hall meetings. As media consultant for Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, Ailes directed televised town hall meetings in which Nixon answered questions from a supportive audience. According to Rick Pearlstein, Ailes suggested Nixon take a question from "A good, mean, Wallaceite cab-driver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about these niggers?" Pearlstein wrote, "Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a 'moderate' version of the opinion. Ailes walked up and down a nearby taxi stand until he found a cabbie who fit the bill."

From Nixonland by Rick Pearlstein:

The panel questioners were unrehearsed. But they were also an effect of stagecraft. They were like those heterogeneous World War II-picture platoons: here a Jewish physician; there the president of an immigrant advocacy group; an outnumbered newsman or two to show the man in the arena wasn't ducking them; a surburban housewife; a businessman. In Philadelphia they hit a snag with the Jewish physician turned out to be a psychiatrist. "You should have heard Len on the phone when I told him I had one on the panel," one staffer related. "If I've ever heard a guy's voice turn white, that was it." (Garment had remembered his evening with Nixon in Elmer Bobst's Florida pool house: "anything except see a shrink.")

Ailes hit upon an idea for a substitute: "A good, mean, Wallaceite cab-driver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about these niggers?'" Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a "moderate" version of the opinion. Ailes walked up and down a nearby taxi stand until he found a cabbie who fit the bill. [Nixonland, p. 331]

Ailes on 1988 strategy against Dukakis: "The only question is whether we depict Wille Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Ailes was credited, along with Lee Atwater, with helping George H.W. Bush come from behind to beat Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. Part of that winning strategy included portraying Dukakis as "soft on crime" and connecting him with convicted felon Willie Horton. Horton committed assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland during a weekend furlough -- a program granting temporary release to prisoners that Dukakis supported but was created under the previous governor. While the Bush campaign did not produce the Horton ad that was widely criticized as "racist," Ailes did produce the "Revolving Door" ad that similarly attacked Dukakis for the furlough program. The campaign also created "The Risk," a negative ad that referenced "a furlough escapee" who "terrorized a Maryland couple." Ailes has been quoted as saying, "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

Ailes' 1989 attacks on Dinkins for Giuliani "prey[ed] upon the fears of the Jewish community." As media consultant for Rudy Giuliani's first mayoral campaign, Ailes placed an ad in a prominent Yiddish Newspaper, The Algemeiner Journal, that featured an image of Guiliani's opponent David Dinkins -- who would become New York City's first African-American mayor -- alongside Jesse Jackson. The ad also displayed a photo of Giuliani with President George H.W. Bush, and the headline stated, ''Let the people of New York choose their own destiny" [New York Times, 9/30/1989]. Howard Kurtz reported that "Ira Silverman, vice president of the American Jewish Committee, said the Giuliani ad seemed a 'legitimate campaign tactic,' but said that he found it 'troubling' because it 'preys upon the fears of the Jewish community' " [Washington Post, 9/29/1989]. National Public Radio has further reported: "Giuliani also tagged Dinkins as a 'Jesse Jackson Democrat.' That was an appeal to the city's large contingent of Jewish voters, who had despised Jackson ever since he used an anti-Semitic epithet to describe New York City. In this context, Giuliani's signature issue of crime took on racial overtones, says political consultant Norman Adler." One of Giuliani's ads featured a New Yorker stating, "I'm tired of living in New York and being scared." From a November 4, 1989, New York Times article:

A new Giuliani television advertisement, aimed largely at wavering Democrats, features six apparently ordinary New Yorkers, who describe Mr. Dinkins as ''a follower.'' They complain, among other things, about ''the crowd'' around Mr. Dinkins, including Robert (Sonny) Carson, a former campaign functionary who later proclaimed himself to be anti-white. Another person in the commercial says, ''I'm tired of living in New York and being scared.''

Ailes produced Limbaugh's television show. Ailes served as executive producer for Limbaugh's syndicated late-night television show, which ran from 1992 to 1996. Limbaugh made several controversial statements on air, many of them documented by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, including his assertion in response to Spike Lee's recommendation that African-American children be permitted to skip school to view Malcolm X: "Spike, if you're going to do that, let's complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater and then blow it up on their way out" [Nexis transcript of Limbaugh's show on October 29, 1992]. And after Sen. Strom Thurmond -- who in 1948 ran for president on a States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) platform that advocated racial segregation -- told a gay service member during a 1993 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on gays in the military, "Your lifestyle is not normal," and asked if he had every sought psychiatric help, Limbaugh stated of Thurmond: "He is not encumbered by trying to be politically correct. He's not encumbered by all of the -- the so-called new niceties and proprieties. He just says it, and if you want to know what America used to be -- and a lot of people wish it still were -- then you listen to Strom Thurmond." Limbaugh added, "He got a standing ovation. Now people -- people applauded that. People applaud -- because -- you know, Strom Thurmond can say it because he's 90 years old and people say, Ah, he's just an old coot. He's from the old days,' and so forth. But that's what most people think. They just don't have the guts to say it. That's why they applaud when somebody does say it that directly and that simply" [Nexis transcript of Limbaugh's show, May 11, 1993].

Fox News under Ailes routinely engages in race-baiting

Beck caps off week of race-baiting by calling Obama a "racist." During the week of July 23, Glenn Beck put forth a steady stream of race-baiting and race-based fearmongering on his television show and radio program. Beck's comments culminated in his remarks that President Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" and "is, I believe, a racist," a statement he subsequently claimed to stand by, in spite of growing criticism.

Hannity just can't "get over" his Rev. Wright obsession. Sean Hannity -- who claimed he "broke the story" about Obama's controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during the 2008 campaign -- mentioned Wright on at least 45 different episodes of his Fox News show between Obama's inauguration and July 31. Indeed, his repeated references to Wright -- most recently in discussions about Obama and race relations in America -- have prompted his own guests to comment, "You always want to bring up Reverend Wright," and "Sean, you need to get over it."

Rev. Wright redux: Media use Jones controversy to revive Wright smear. Conservative media figures used the controversy over former White House adviser Van Jones' past statements as an excuse to again link Obama to Wright. On Fox News, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer all invoked Wright while discussing Jones in order to question Obama's associations.

Guest-hosting O'Reilly, Ingraham claims Obama "channeled his best Jeremiah Wright accent" in NAACP speech. While guest-hosting Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, radio host Laura Ingraham stated, "Last night President Obama spoke to the NAACP and channeled his best Jeremiah Wright accent." After airing a clip of Obama's remarks, Ingraham added, "Now, why does the first African-American feel the need to affect an accent that he clearly does not possess? Or is that the way people speak in Honolulu? It's a cheap attempt to pander to an audience that already supports him" [The O'Reilly Factor, 7/17/09].

After asking, "Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?" Hannity continued to smear Barack and Michelle Obama. Hannity falsely asserted that Wright "honored [Louis] Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, saying, quote, 'He truly epitomized greatness.' " In fact, the managing editor of a magazine founded by the church wrote those words, not the minister. Hannity also stated that Michelle Obama "wrote in her [undergraduate] thesis that we see at Princeton, you know, the belief -- 'because of the belief that blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.' " However, as the full context of the passage makes clear, she was discussing views that black students who attended Princeton in the 1970s may have held, not asserting her own views [Hannity's America, 3/5/08].

Ignoring Obama's statement on award, Hannity suggested that Obama "associated" himself with Farrakhan. Hannity suggested that Obama had "associated" himself with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who had received an award from a magazine founded by Obama's church. But Hannity, who described Farrakhan as "an anti-Semite racist," did not note that Obama issued a statement "condemn[ing]" Farrakhan's "anti-Semitic statements" and saying of the award: "[I]t is not a decision with which I agree" [Hannity & Colmes, 1/18/09].

Morris: McCain "doesn't have to" engage in Willie Horton-like campaign because O'Reilly is already doing so. After airing portions of a controversial sermon by Wright, Bill O'Reilly -- who described Wright's comments as "anti-American, to say the least" -- asked Dick Morris , "If you were [Sen. John] McCain, do you use this against Obama?" Morris replied, "He doesn't have to. You just did. And the talk radio people around the country" will. Morris continued: "[T]he other media, the other conservative media can make a big deal of it" [The O'Reilly Factor, 3/13/08].

Hannity smeared Gates as anti-white radical by distorting 1994 interview. Hannity repeatedly misrepresented Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 1994 interview on C-SPAN's Booknotes to suggest that Gates had recently said he agreed with Malcolm X that the "white man was the devil" and to smear Gates as "extreme" and a "radical." In fact, in that interview, Gates was talking about events in 1959, specifically his witnessing his mother's positive reaction to a documentary they watched together about Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam [Hannity, 7/28/09].

Conservative media figures falsely suggest that Reich proposed excluding white males from stimulus package. Michelle Malkin and Hannity have falsely asserted or suggested that Robert Reich, speaking at a congressional forum, proposed that jobs created by the economic stimulus package should exclude white males. In fact, Reich has repeatedly stated that he favors a stimulus plan that "includ[es] women and minorities, and the long-term unemployed" in addition to skilled professionals and white male construction workers, not one that is solely limited to them.

O'Reilly tease: "[S]hould white Americans be concerned about Judge Sotomayor?" O'Reilly stated, "Next on the rundown: Should white Americans be concerned about Judge Sotomayor? Later, far-left Hispanic group says if you oppose the judge, you could be racist" [The O'Reilly Factor, 7/13/09].

Fox News is just asking about Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remarks: "New Racism?" During On The Record, guest-host Martha MacCallum stated, "The battle over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination intensifies tonight. Some conservatives continue to hammer Sotomayor and they are focused on this comment, which we've seen a lot this week." MacCallum then aired text of Sotomayor's comments under a headline stating, "New Racism?" [On the Record, 5/31/09].

Beck: Sotomayor "sure sounds like a racist here." Beck said Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment "smacks of racism" and is "one of the most outrageous racist remarks I've heard." Beck later added: "I hate the charges and cries of racism. But when I hear this -- I mean, gee. She sure sounds like a racist here" [Glenn Beck, 5/26/09].

Reporting on Sotomayor, "identity politics," and "the immigration debate," Fox shows video of apparent immigrants in detention. Wendell Goler reported, "Many observers saw President Obama's election as a validation of a post-racial campaign, and they see identity politics in Sotomayor's nomination -- an appeal to Hispanic voters, many of whom turned against Republicans in the immigration debate. But [Linda] Chavez, whose group doesn't support Sotomayor, says the Hispanic community doesn't march in lock-step." As he spoke, Fox News showed footage of apparent immigrants in detention [Special Report, 5/29/09].

Tucker Carlson claimed Sotomayor made "racist statement." Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson claimed that Sotomayor had said that "because of your race or gender, you're a better or worse judge, that female Latina judges are likely to render wiser decisions than white male judges." Carlson continued, "That's a racist statement, by any calculation" [The Live Desk, 5/26/09].

Krauthammer declares Sotomayor "a believer in the racial spoils system." Krauthammer stated on Special Report that Sotomayor's dismissal of the Ricci case "tells us that she really is a believer in the racial spoils system" [Special Report, 5/26/09].

Rev. Peterson: Obama was elected "mostly by black racists and white guilty people." Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson said, "I think we all agree that Barack Obama was elected by, mostly by black racists and white guilty people" [Hannity, 2/3/09]. Peterson also asserted that Obama is "no different than" Rev. Wright and the NAACP, who he claimed "hate white Americans, and they especially hate the white man" [Glenn Beck, 6/24/09].

&mdash J.K.F & E.S.

Copyright © 2009 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.

Changing the World

By BOB HERBERT, NY Times, October 27, 2009

One of the most cherished items in my possession is a postcard that was sent from Mississippi to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in June 1964.

“Dear Mom and Dad,” it says, “I have arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.”

That was the last word sent to his family by Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old college student who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, along with fellow civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, on his first full day in Mississippi — June 21, the same date as the postmark on the card. The goal of the three young men had been to help register blacks to vote.

The postcard was given to me by Andrew’s brother, David, who has become a good friend.

Andrew and that postcard came to mind over the weekend as I was thinking about the sense of helplessness so many ordinary Americans have been feeling as the nation is confronted with one enormous, seemingly intractable problem after another. The helplessness is beginning to border on paralysis. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly a decade long, are going badly, and there is no endgame in sight.

Monday morning’s coffee was accompanied by stories about suicide bombings in the heart of Baghdad that killed at least 150 people and wounded more than 500 and helicopter crashes in Afghanistan that killed 14 Americans.

Here at home, the terrible toll from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression continues, with no end to the joblessness in sight and no comprehensible plans for fashioning a healthy economy for the years ahead. The government’s finances resemble a Ponzi scheme. If you want to see the epidemic that is really clobbering American families, look past the H1N1 virus to the home foreclosure crisis.

The Times ran a Page A1 article on Monday that said layoffs, foreclosures and other problems associated with the recession had resulted in big increases in the number of runaway children, many of whom were living in dangerous conditions in the streets.

Americans have tended to watch with a remarkable (I think frightening) degree of passivity as crises of all sorts have gripped the country and sent millions of lives into tailspins. Where people once might have deluged their elected representatives with complaints, joined unions, resisted mass firings, confronted their employers with serious demands, marched for social justice and created brand new civic organizations to fight for the things they believed in, the tendency now is to assume that there is little or nothing ordinary individuals can do about the conditions that plague them.

This is so wrong. It is the kind of thinking that would have stopped the civil rights movement in its tracks, that would have kept women in the kitchen or the steno pool, that would have prevented labor unions from forcing open the doors that led to the creation of a vast middle class.

This passivity and sense of helplessness most likely stems from the refusal of so many Americans over the past few decades to acknowledge any sense of personal responsibility for the policies and choices that have led the country into such a dismal state of affairs, and to turn their backs on any real obligation to help others who were struggling.

Those chickens have come home to roost. Being an American has become a spectator sport. Most Americans watch the news the way you’d watch a ballgame, or a long-running television series, believing that they have no more control over important real-life events than a viewer would have over a coach’s strategy or a script for “Law & Order.”

With that kind of attitude, Andrew Goodman would never have left the comfort of his family home in Manhattan. Rosa Parks would have gotten up and given her seat to a white person, and the Montgomery bus boycott would never have happened. Betty Friedan would never have written “The Feminine Mystique.”

The nation’s political leaders and their corporate puppet masters have fouled this nation up to a fare-thee-well. We will not be pulled from the morass without a big effort from an active citizenry, and that means a citizenry fired with a sense of mission and the belief that their actions, in concert with others, can make a profound difference.

It can start with just a few small steps. Mrs. Parks helped transform a nation by refusing to budge from her seat. Maybe you want to speak up publicly about an important issue, or host a house party, or perhaps arrange a meeting of soon-to-be dismissed employees, or parents at a troubled school.

It’s a risk, sure. But the need is great, and that’s how you change the world.

Unasked Question about Sam Alito

Glenn Greenwald

Monday July 13, 2009 17:14 EDT'

updated below

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Sam Alito used his opening statement to emphasize how his experience as an Italian-American influences his judicial decision-making (video is here):

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country" . . . .

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Two weeks ago, Alito cast the deciding vote in Ricci v. DeStefano, an intensely contested affirmative action case. He did so by ruling in favor of the Italian-American firefighters, finding that they were unlawfully discriminated against, even though the district court judge who heard all the evidence and the three-judge appellate panel ruled against them and dismissed their case. Notably, the majority Supreme Court opinion Alito joined (.pdf) began by highlighting not the relevant legal doctrine, but rather, the emotional factors that made the Italian-American-plaintiffs empathetic.

Did Alito's Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American plaintiffs? Has anyone raised that question? Given that he himself said that he "do[es] take that into account" -- and given that Sonia Sotomayor spent 6 straight hours today being accused by GOP Senators and Fox News commentators of allowing her Puerto Rican heritage to lead her to discriminate against white litigants -- why isn't that question being asked about Alito's vote in Ricci?

Also: if empathy is irrelevant to judicial decision-making, why are GOP Senators calling Frank Ricci as a witness at this hearing? Since he's obviously not there to testify about the strict legalistic doctrines governing his claims, but instead is only there to trumpet the facts that make him "sympathetic" so that people will emotionally react against Sotomayor's ruling (his dyslexia, the amount he spent on books and tutors, his hopes for a promotion), isn't everything he has to say totally irrelevant pursuant to the GOP's alleged judicial principles?

UPDATE: I'll have running commentary on Twitter today on the Sotomayor hearing. It can be followed and read here. I'll likely post something more comprehensive here later today on this or another topic.

Republican apologizes; said gorilla, first lady related

NOTE FROM GREETINGS: This is just an unbelievable comment about anyone.. certainly racial.. and a horrible comment about our wonderful, charming First Lady, who clearly has more class in her little finger than this man has witnessed in his entire life. I wonder where the media is on this one. And where is the outrage from Republican Senators and Congressmen? I hope they quickly distance themselves from this. Calling Sarah Palin? Share your outrage for fairness.

Monday, June 15, 2009 10:10 EDT, Salon.com

One of the perils of the Internet age, for people who weren't using things like Facebook during their formative years, is the tendency to forget that almost nothing you say on the Web is truly private. Anything can come out, if the right people are watching.

For example, as South Carolina Republican activist Rusty DePass found out over the weekend, if you comment on Facebook about a report on a gorilla that's escaped from a zoo and write, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors -- probably harmless," someone will find out.

DePass, who has chaired one county GOP organization in South Carolina and was co-chair of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign for his county, has now made an apology, of sorts. ""I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest," he told one local television station. He added, "The comment was hers, not mine," meaning that the first lady had previously said something about animals like gorillas being ancestors of humans, evolutionarily speaking. The New York Daily News reports, however, that it can't find evidence of Obama saying anything like that.

― Alex Koppelman

Republican's Gift Held Racial Parody of Obama

FROM KEYSTONE: I missed this story.. both about Saltsman, The Republican Party and its chairmanship candidates, AND about Limbaugh.

Both should resign, just as David Duke was ostracized for such behavior. Anyone supporting it is no better than any other Klan member. Pehaps they just want to be able to feel it's OK to act like that even though they know it's wrong.

Sort of like kids when they were under 5.. . except they all have better inner compasses than these folks to begin with.So long Saltsman and Limbaugh. Your time has passed. And it was wrong in any time.

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2008; A05

Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members this month a holiday music CD that included "Barack the Magic Negro," a parody song first aired in 2007 by talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Created by conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, the song puts new lyrics to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon," and it is performed as if black activist Al Sharpton were singing it. Limbaugh played it after the Los Angeles Times ran an opinion piece with the same title.

"A guy from the LA paper said it made guilty whites feel good, they'll vote for him and not for me cuz he's not from the hood," the song goes. "Oh, Barack the magic negro lives in DC, the LA Times they called him that because he's black but not authentically."

The CD accompanied holiday greetings from Saltsman, a Tennessee resident who managed former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's campaign for president. Saltsman announced his bid to lead the Republican Party this month.

He did not return a call seeking comment last night. Saltsman had earlier told the Hill newspaper, which first reported the incident, that the song is meant as a joke. "Paul Shanklin is a longtime friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for 'The Rush Limbaugh Show' are light-hearted political parodies," he told the newspaper.

Another candidate to lead the GOP, South Carolina party chair Katon Dawson, drew headlines this fall by resigning his membership of 12 years in a whites-only country club, weeks before launching his run for the national job.

The incidents for both men come as Republicans are reeling from losing the presidency and dozens of House and Senate seats, and as many in the party are trying to improve relations with African Americans, who voted in record numbers for Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates last month.

Among the candidates for RNC chairman are two African Americans: Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland; and Ken Blackwell, a former secretary of state in Ohio. Neither could be reached last night for comment.

A spokesman for President-elect Obama also declined to comment.

The RNC is scheduled to vote for chairman at the end of January

In Defense of White Americans

by Frank Rich, NY Times

IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.

The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man who Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.)

Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC.

After dismissing the Northern Virginia suburbs, she asserted that the “real Virginia” — the part of the state “more Southern in nature” — will prove “very responsive” to the McCain message. All Pfotenhauer left out was “macaca,” but with McCain calling Barack Obama’s tax plan “welfare” and campaign surrogates (including the robo-calling Rudy Giuliani) linking the Democrat to violent, Willie Horton-like criminality, that would have been redundant.

We don’t know yet if McCain will go the way of Allen in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, when L.B.J. vanquished another Arizona Republican in a landslide. But we do know that Obama swept like a conquering hero through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, last week and that he leads in every recent Virginia poll.

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle’s prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press’s default setting has been to ominously intone that “in the privacy of the voting booth” ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man.

A leading vehicle for this journalistic mind-set has been the unending obsession with “the Bradley effect” — as if nothing has changed in America since 1982, when some polls (possibly for reasons having nothing to do with race) predicted erroneously that a black candidate, Tom Bradley, would win the California governorship. In 2008, there is, if anything, more evidence of a reverse Bradley effect — Obama’s primary vote totals more often exceeded those in the final polls than not — but poor old Bradley keeps being flogged anyway.

So do all those deer hunters in western Pennsylvania. Once Hillary Clinton whipped Obama in the Rust Belt, it’s been a bloviation staple (echoing the Clinton camp’s line) that a black guy is doomed among Reagan Democrats, Joe Sixpacks, rednecks, Joe the Plumbers or whichever condescending term you want to choose. (Clinton at one low point settled on “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”) Michigan in particular was repeatedly said to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach because of incorrigible racism — until McCain abandoned it as hopeless this month in the face of a double-digit Obama lead.

The constant tide of anthropological articles and television reports set in blue-collar diners, bars and bowling alleys have hyped this racial theory of the race. So did the rampant misreading of primary-season exit polls. On cable TV and the Sunday network shows, there was endless chewing over the internal numbers in the Clinton victories. It was doomsday news for Obama, for instance, that some 12 percent of white Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania said race was a factor in their choice and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. Ipso facto — and despite the absence of any credible empirical evidence — these Clinton voters would either stay home or flock to McCain in November.

The McCain campaign is so dumb that it bought into the press’s confirmation of its own prejudices. Even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1.2 million in Pennsylvania (more than double the 2004 gap), even though Obama leads by double digits in almost every recent Pennsylvania poll and even though no national Republican ticket has won there since 1988, McCain started pouring his dwindling resources into the state this month. When the Democratic Representative John Murtha described his own western Pennsylvania district as a “racist area,” McCain feigned outrage and put down even more chips on the race card, calling the region the “most patriotic, most God-loving” part of America.

Well, there are racists in western Pennsylvania, as there are in most pockets of our country. But despite the months-long drumbeat of punditry to the contrary, there are not and have never been enough racists in 2008 to flip this election. In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds age doing more damage to McCain than race to Obama.

Nor is America’s remaining racism all that it once was, or that the McCain camp has been hoping for it to be. There are even “racists for Obama,” as Politico labels the phenomenon: White Americans whose distrust of black people in general crumbles when they actually get to know specific black people, including a presidential candidate who extends a genuine helping hand in a time of national crisis.

The original “racist for Obama,” after all, was none other than Obama’s own white, Kansas-raised grandmother, the gravely ill Madelyn Dunham, whom he visited in Hawaii on Friday. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote of how shaken he was when he learned of her overwhelming fear of black men on the street. But he weighed that reality against his unshakeable love for her and hers for him, and he got past it.

When Obama cited her in his speech on race last spring, the right immediately accused him of “throwing his grandmother under the bus.” But Obama’s critics were merely projecting their own racial hang-ups. He still loves his grandmother. He was merely speaking candidly and generously — like an adult — about the strange, complex and ever-changing racial dynamics of America. He hit a chord because many of us have had white relatives of our own like his, and we, too, see them in full and often love them anyway.

Such human nuances are lost on conservative warriors of the Allen-McCain-Palin ilk. They see all Americans as only white or black, as either us or them. The dirty little secret of such divisive politicians has always been that their rage toward the Others is exceeded only by their cynical conviction that Real Americans are a benighted bunch of easily manipulated bigots. This seems to be the election year when voters in most of our myriad Americas are figuring that out.

A tale of two faces - McCain Campaign's Fake Hate Crimes while Perpurtrating their own real ones

Update from Greetings: Sunday, October 26
I thought that the Salon article pointed out the distinct issue with those on the far right so ready to use racism to divide the country; with the McCain campaign ready to jump on a false story generated to cause more fear of other races; and with the quiet, steady-handed work of the Pittsburgh police that put truth at the forefront, thus casting light on those who tried to act scurrilously.

I noted the quote from Fox News VP in the article who, while saying that if this were a hoax, it should be the end of John McCain's campaign, his point was that it should cause those who support Obama to rethink that support. My first thought was, if it did happen, I hope they find the person and I hope this woman is alright. My second thought was, "why should it cause anyone to rethink support for Obama?" Although, certainly, I have rethought my support of McCain and Palin because their supporters were shouting such outrageous statements as "Terrorist" and "Kill him" of a U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate who has served honorably, and who might be our future President. This, while, Palin and McCain continued to whip these marginal personalities into a murderous frenzy... personally.

So today I looked up the Fox News (Faux News) website, and thought, "OK... Moody should be talking about what he said... this should be the end of McCain's campaign." But to my feigned surprise, there was no such statement from Moody or Fox.. and there was absolutely no coverage.. even followup coverage. .. of this very dangerous, racist hoax on the part of a McCain supporter.. a hoax which was amplified by McCain's campaign, by Faux News, Drudge, and others. Only reports of "Palin attacks Obama " and other such headlines.

Whoops. We might actually have to do what we said we'd do? Act responsibly? Decry racism in America and race baiting on behalf of one of the candidates?... nahhhhhh

Saturday October 25, 2008 23:29 EDT Salon.com

I was attending the fascinating WebbyConnect conference for a few days, and the campaign got deeply weird while I was gone. Catching up on television Friday I found myself transfixed by wall-to-wall coverage of two female faces suddenly at the center of this presidential race --the expensively made-up visage of Sarah Palin and the sad self-mutilated face of Ashley Todd, the disturbed McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania who claimed she was sexually assaulted by an Obama supporter. In a two-day news environment that was supposed to be a big opportunity for John McCain -- Barack Obama was off the trail with his ailing grandmother --McCain instead faced critical coverage of the shocking sums Palin spent for clothes, hair and makeup, as well as his campaign's role in advancing what turned out to be the totally false tale of a white woman abused by a black male Obama backer.

Should either of these stories be big news? Of course both are a distraction from the big issues of the campaign -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the strange controversies over these two women matter because they reveal a corruption at the heart of the McCain campaign. The huge sum spent perfecting the already beautiful Palin for the cameras is the less disturbing of the two stories, but I would disagree with some of my Broadsheet colleagues: I think it's a valid topic for reporting, analysis and criticism. It shows the insanely screwy priorities of the McCain campaign.

Sarah Palin didn't need the best clothing and stylists money could buy; she needed tutoring and coaching on the issues. (She also needed more vetting in August, and what she really needed was to stay as the governor of Alaska, but we won't go there.) Then there's the class hypocrisy -- the so-called Wal-Mart mom shopping at Neiman Marcus, spending more on clothes in a few days than most women spend in their adult lifetimes. The fact that the highest paid staffer on the troubled McCain team this month is Palin's makeup person is also ludicrous; you can't make this stuff up. But it proves that the campaign values Palin primarily for her star power. Robert Draper's incredible article in the New York Times Magazine makes the cynical emphasis on artifice clearer, and more damaging to the campaign.

The Ashley Todd hoax is much more disturbing, of course -- and what's worst about it is the role of the McCain campaign and conservative media in validating it. A local McCain communications staffer gave out details of the alleged attack that hadn't been confirmed by police. Both McCain and Palin called to console this lone staffer, again before the details of the attack could be confirmed, increasing its news value. Matt Drudge , of course, hyped the story hard. Fox News V.P. John Moody said the attack could lead some voters to "revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee." (Moody also said that "if the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." We'll be watching for a Fox "Breaking News " alert declaring the McCain campaign officially "over," now that the hoax has been revealed.) Andrew Sullivan rounded up the conservatives who breathlessly advanced the story here.

Why were so many people on the right so ready to believe such a disturbing tale based on so little evidence? Was the story of a violent 6-foot-4-inch black man -- how tall is Obama? --punishing a white female McCain voter too good not to be true? It's hard not to see the troubled Ashley Todd's story, and its reception on the right, as a result of the climate of fear and demonization that McCain and Palin clearly believe is their only hope to win Nov. 4. Todd needs help, but McCain and Palin need to be criticized for helping to advance this story before the facts were in. It's really one of the most despicable things this awful team has done in a pretty lowlife campaign. There's no doubt in my mind that the anti-Obama slurs ("pallin' around with terrorists") that have come from Sarah Palin's lovely and expensively lacquered mouth helped create a climate that leads a disturbed person like Todd to her drama of victimization.

But while these strangely disturbing female faces -- one gussied up with the best makeup money can buy, the other tough to look at, mutilated by self-hate -- visually dominated the news Friday, a parade of male Republicans endorsing Obama this week was the real story. Charles Fried, Scott McClellan, William Weld, Arne Carlson and of course Colin Powell last Sunday -- each laid out a devastating case for why they had to abandon their party, and most of them focused on McCain's irresponsible pick of Palin as a major factor in their decision. Christopher Hitchens likewise came out for Obama, calling McCain "borderline senile" on "Hardball" Friday. The news was weird this week, but still, it's all bad for McCain-Palin.




-- Joan Walsh

Confessions of a Phone Solicitor

By GAIL COLLINS

Word comes from Madison, Wis., that a telemarketer named Ted Zoromski quit his job this week over John McCain’s message.

Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in.

“Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV.

This story, relayed via Mike Allen on Politico.com, struck me because I once worked as a telemarketer, and it is an occupation so soul-numbing that it is hard to imagine that anything could make it worse. I woke up people on the overnight shift who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time in six days. Sometimes, when there was clearly nobody at home, I would just let the phone ring and ring in order to avoid having to call anybody else. Once after about 30 rings, I heard the breathless voice of a man who had climbed down off the roof in hopes that this was the critical business call he had been waiting for all year, the one that was going to change his life forever. Imagine his joy when he discovered that it was, instead, an exciting opportunity to purchase an entire packet of portrait photographs of his loved ones at a special discount price.

So truly, if you can come up with something that would send a telemarketer over the edge, you have really overachieved on the offensiveness front.

For a while, John McCain and Sarah Palin were so over-the-top about Barack Obama that people in the crowds started yelling death threats — sometimes while simultaneously begging McCain to “take the gloves off.” The idea of what they were hoping to see in a post-glove era scared everybody so much that the campaign tamped things down.

Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend, Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted “to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.”

In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible, Hayes then announced that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid.”

All this was a direct outgrowth of Sarah Palin’s own comments in North Carolina, in which she praised the “pro-America” areas of the country. But Hayes had clearly been absent for the day in scurrilous campaign school when they explain that you aren’t supposed to specifically name the anti-American parts.

Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was launching into the Obama/terrorist spin when she suggested that the news media should investigate “the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America.” So far, the only person who’s felt the impact of her call to reinvent McCarthyism for a post-Communist planet has been her opponent, a hitherto totally ignored Democrat named Elwyn Tinklenberg, who was stunned to discover in the following days that he had received close to $1 million in donations.

When reporters first began covering political speeches in the 19th century, politicians were so appalled at the idea that somebody planned to write down what they said that they would stop speaking if a reporter showed up along the campaign route. Today, in the post-macaca era, you’d figure that politicians would be so sensitive to the perpetual presence of recording devices that they’d censor their comments even while muttering to themselves when taking a shower. Not to mention comments made right after they have been made up, offered coffee in the MSNBC green room, had a technician install three different recording devices under their clothing and given a seat in front of a large camera.

But the tone of this campaign has given some of the Republican faithful, even those who are members of Congress, the impression that questioning the patriotism of large groups of the population is now O.K.

Right now, all the polls predict that in less than two weeks, Barack Obama is going to be elected president. The McCain campaign disputes this. Large numbers of Obama supporters are also in doubt, possibly because they keep getting e-mails from their relatives in Toledo revealing that Obama has gone to Hawaii not to visit his ailing grandmother, but to destroy evidence that he is not actually an American citizen.

For John McCain, the best question now is not whether he’s going to lose, but what kind of a country he’d wind up with if he won after a campaign even a telemarketer can’t love.

Who's Behind Those Ugly Robocalls from the Republican Party? Freedom's Watch

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro and Mark Murray
The donors who are financing the new multi-million-dollar TV ad campaign arguing against a withdrawal from Iraq include a Who's Who of former Bush Administration ambassadors (to plum assignments like France, Italy, and Malta); a least one of Bush's original Pioneers; the man ranked by Forbes (in 2006) as the third-richest American; and, of course, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Brad Blakeman, the president of Freedom's Watch, which is running these ads, released the following names as donors to his group. Blakeman told NBC that the rest of the donors are choosing to be anonymous. Freedom's Watch is a 501(c)4 organization, which can collect unlimited contributions and doesn't have to disclose its donors.

Here they are....

-- Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta. Per a White House press release announcing his appointment as ambassador, "Gioia is presently the Chairman and CEO of Gioia Management Company, a management and investment holding company located in Buffalo, New York."

-- Kevin Moley, whom Bush appointed U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva in September 2001. Per the White House press release announcing his appointment, Moley "was a private investor and served on the Board of Directors of five publicly held companies and three privately held companies. He previously served as a consultant to Kinetra LLC, the successor company to Integrated Medical Systems Inc., which Ambassador Moley served as President and CEO. Ambassador Moley was also Senior Vice President of PCS Health Systems, Inc."

-- Mel Sembler, whom Bush appointed as US ambassador to Italy in 2001. According to a State Department bio, Stembler was "most recently the Chairman of the Board of The Sembler Company, one of the nation's leading shopping center developers. He is nationally recognized as an activist in the anti-drug campaign and as a staunch, long-time supporter of the Republican Party and its candidates."

-- Howard Leach, who was Bush's ambassador to France from 2001-2005 and an original Bush Pioneer. Per the US embassy's Web site, Leach is "an entrepreneur, investor and chief executive. He began his career as founder and president of several agri-business corporations. He has served as president and major shareholder of numerous industrial and financial companies."

-- Dr. John Templeton is chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation

-- Edward Snider

-- Sheldon Adelson, casino mogul, ranked as the third-richest American (worth $20 billion) according to Forbes in 2006

-- Richard Fox

-- Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary

-- Gary Erlbaum

-- Matt Brooks

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Origins

Freedom's Watch has tight connections to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the American Enterprise Institute.^[3] The group was conceived at a Florida meeting of the RJC in March 2007 ^[4][5] in part to counter MoveOn.org and help the Bush administration sell its Iraq policy.^[3] It was founded by a dozen conservatives of immense wealth,^[4] most notably Sheldon Adelson, who donated almost all of its initial funding.^[6] Four out of five members of Freedom's Watch original board are Republican Jews, and four of the eight initial donors are Jewish, though board member Matt Brooks said "it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a Jewish direction," and noted that "half of the donors contributing to the group's first $15 million ad campaign are not Jewish."^{[7] [8]}

In 2008, the group became paralyzed by internal problems and plagued by gridlock and infighting, with operatives complaining of Adelson's insistence on parceling out money project by project limiting the group's ability to plan and be nimble.^[6] For example, the group spent weeks working on a package for the presidential election, only for Adelson to decline to fund it.^[6] Some staff members blamed the problems on Freedom's Watch president Bradley Blakeman, who resigned in March 2008.^[6]

Positions

Freedom's Watch believes that President Bush's Iraq War policies should be supported. "More and more Democratic and Republican members agree: The surge in Iraq is working," according to one ad. "Victory is America's only choice."^[9] The group also claims that Iran is a grave threat to the United States and Israel. According to the group's president, "If Hitler's warnings were heeded when he wrote 'Mein Kampf,' he could have been stopped." Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he continues, "is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel." One ad calls Ahmadenijad "a terrorist."^[4]

Board

• Ari Fleischer,^[7][10] a former Bush press secretary.
• Matthew Brooks,^[7][10] executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
• Mel Sembler,^[7][10] a longtime RJC leader and former ambassador to Italy who helped finance the 2000 Florida recount battle.
• William Weidner,^[7][10] a Las Vegas casino operator.

The original president was Bradley Blakeman, though he resigned in March 2008 after a series of high-level staff departures. ^[11]

Notable donors

Freedom's Watch's donors include:^[12]

• Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the fifteenth richest American in Forbes magazine's rankings last year, is the top donor.^[6][3]
• Mel Sembler
• John Templeton, Jr, board member of the Templeton Growth Fund and financier of Let Freedom Ring.
• Kevin E. Moley, former U.S. ambassador to international organizations in Geneva, and a senior adviser to Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign.
• Howard Leach, CEO of Leach Capital and former ambassador to France who also helped fund the Florida recount.
• Anthony Gioia, head of Gioia Management and former ambassador to Malta.
• Richard Fox, co-founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
• Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties.
• Ed Snyder, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76'ers
  

The Real Scandal

by Bob Herbert, NY Times

It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Can a rancid Congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Ms. Bachmann’s demented desire (“I would love to see an exposé like that”) is of a piece with the G.O.P.’s unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans — and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents’ supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they’ve been cast.

Which brings me to the phony Acorn scandal.

John McCain, who placed his principles in a blind trust once the presidential race heated up, warned the country during the presidential debate last week that Acorn, which has been registering people to vote by the hundreds of thousands, was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.”

It turns out that a tiny percentage of these new registrations are bogus, with some of them carrying ludicrous names like Mickey Mouse. Republicans have tried to turn this into a mighty oak of a scandal, with Mr. McCain thundering at the debate that it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Please. The Times put the matter in perspective when it said in an editorial that Acorn needs to be more careful with some aspects of its voter-registration process. It needs to do a better job selecting canvassers, among other things.

“But,” the editorial added, “for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.”

Two important points need to be made here. First, the reckless attempt by Senator McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made Acorn the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. Acorn staff members have been threatened and sickening, murderous comments have been made about supporters of Barack Obama. (Senator Obama had nothing to do with Acorn’s voter-registration drives.)

Second, when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.

In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made — surprise, surprise — in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.

In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republican lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.

That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another — in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it — the G.O.P. has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible — or, better yet, impossible — for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.

For Senator McCain to flip reality on its head and point to an overwhelmingly legitimate voter-registration effort as a “threat to the fabric of democracy” is a breathtaking exercise in absurdity.

Miles Rapoport, a former Connecticut secretary of state who is now president of Demos, a public policy group, remarked on the irony of elected Republican officials deliberately attempting to thwart voting. Some years ago, he said, he “and all the other secretaries of state” would bemoan the lack of interest in voting, especially among the young and the poor.

Now, he said, with the explosion of voter registration and the heightened interest in the presidential campaign, you’d think officials “would welcome that, and encourage it, and even celebrate it.” Instead, he said, in so many cases, G.O.P. officials are “trying to pare down the lists.”

Maddow Interviews Doris Kearns Goodwin on Palin's Hate Speeches

Doris Kearns Goodwin compares Palin's hate speeches and audience responses to pre-WWII Nazi Germany in the 30's and pre-integration U.S. in the 60's. This should NEVER be America.

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama

By FRANK RICH

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.

It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

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.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.

To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.

But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.