McCain Backing off from Hate Rallies - is it too late?

[stevenleser]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/McCain-Backing-off-from-Ha-by-Steven-Leser-081011-448.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Steven Leser


I kept wondering, as I watched news depictions of McCain rallies where angry people were referring to Obama with the N-word, saying to "kill him" or "off with his head", whether McCain supporters were going to spontaneously start singing the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

I couldn't tell if I was watching clips of modern day Republican rallies or trailers for Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Ultranationalism married with "Who is Obama (with the implication that he isn't 'one of us' ethnically as well as politically and nationally)", and "He is a socialist...kill him", and "Our opponents are the enemy and traitors to the country and its people" is right out of the most reactionary propaganda of the 1930's.

What kind of judgment does McCain have that he did not put a stop to this immediately? Did it really take two weeks to figure out that the rhetoric coming out of his and Palin's campaign rallies was dangerously inflammatory and divisive? Whipping up crowds (or allowing them to whip themselves up) with anger and hate is always a bad idea, but in a time of economic crisis and uncertainty and the fear associated with that, it is like playing with pure nitroglycerin near a bonfire. The situation can get out of control and blow up in your face at any moment.

The first time (and any subsequent times) McCain heard the use of the N-word, or suggestions of harm to Obama or "Socialism", he should have said "Look, we disagree vehemently with his policies, but he isn't a bad person or a Socialist (or an Arab or Muslim) and I will condemn anyone calling him anything racist or any suggestion that harm come to him. Moreover, the Secret Service, who protects both myself, and Obama, have no concept of irony or humor when it comes to threats against those whom they protect". That is all it would have taken and it would have put an end to this.

When I asked, "Is it too late" in the title to this article, the question is in three parts.

Part 1, Is it too late that McCain is doing this for someone who claims to have the leadership abilities to lead the country. Wouldn't a real leader have stopped this right away?

Part 2, Is it too late to stop the idea that now might be ingrained in hardcore Republicans that Obama is somehow the enemy? Thinking of him as the political opponent is one thing. The idea of him as the enemy means that they would need to continue fighting him post inauguration day if he is the winner of the election. It means a divided country with an angry and (at least verbally) combative opposition. This is the opposite of to what both Obama and McCain both agreed at the beginning of this campaign, that is to campaign with an eye to healing the rifts in the country.

Part 3, The most scary and hopefully least likely "Is it too late" question is "Could this be the beginning of a permanent inability for the country to remain united and/or did McCain enable a significant number of his supporters to embrace neo-fascism?" I don't think we are there yet, but we know that radical 'isms like Communism and Fascism/Nazism thrive in times of economic crisis. Thus, the fact that McCain allowed this to go on for as long as he did adds some small percentage chance of total disaster. Anyone wanting to be President of the United States has to be smarter than this.

McCain is now putting a stop to having hate in his rallies and late is better than never, but is it enough? See this video:



If the video embed doesnt work, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf6YKOkfFsE

McCain is still allowing the airing of ads portraying Obama as a bad person consorting with terrorists. Palin is still going around and saying that Obama is guilty of 'infanticide'. Is it not dishonest of McCain and a mixed message to his supporters to say one thing in person and then do the exact opposite by proxy? The results? See this thread on Free Republic, a good place to get the pulse of the conservative base, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2103102/posts where there are comments regarding Obama like:

"My respect can never be earned by criminal Muslim terrorists."

"this traitor is very very afraid that people are mad at him, pelosi, dodd, all these hooligan. These thugs need to be very worried, i tell you."
-----------------------------------

Based on this, I will give the answers to parts 1 and 2 above. It is too late for McCain to try to back away from the hostile rhetoric and be thought of as having the judgment and leadership to be President. It is also too late to keep the hardcore Republican conservative base from believing that Obama is the enemy. McCain has caused the election to become a negative and divisive instrument for the next several years and he deserves to pay the political price for that.

[KatyaR]

1. It's Pandora's box--

once the box is opened, you can't get it shut again. This just gives legitimacy to these wackos' beliefs.

[Rocknrule]

2. When was the N-bomb dropped?

I thought they said everything BUT that

[stevenleser]

3. N-word and the phrase "Sit Down Boy" at Palin rally

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/mccain-does-nothing-as-cr_n_132366.html

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."
---------------------------
Also at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/10/mccain.crowd/index.html


Like I said, I'm just waiting to hear "Die Fahne hoch..."

[vaberella]

7. I haven't heard it also, however, I'm sure it's been said.

You don't through out "kill him" or "bomb Obama" without the *n* word flying around at some point.

[bigtree]

4. they're not backing off at all

[vaberella]

9. What people aren't realizing about the base not backing off---The base doesn't believe McCain.

They don't believe Obama is a good person. They don't believe he's not an Arab or Muslim. They just don't believe any of it, and this is seen when looking at Gayle Quinnel, the lady at yesterdays rally who said Obama was a Muslim and McCain had to correct her. When she was being interviewed she found all this misinformation and said that McCain probably knows what she knows but doesn't want to say anything. His base is riled in such a way that even he's seen as a liar who's protecting Obama.

[KathieG]

5. Well...I don't hear Palin backing off...

just heard her on MSNBC at a rally throwing more red meat...getting everyone charged up about Obama and abortion.

[HughMoran]

6. It's too late - the narrative has been written

I knew the Republicans couldn't resist the underlying racism that is the Republican party (the party is at least 60% based on raw racism IMO). Heh, when desperate, McAngry/P* succumbed to their inner bigot.

[vaberella]

8. Answer for all three: It's too late.

1. One of the things that stunned me was that neither Palin or McCain nipped those statements once they came out and went behind the frivolous excuse of "we didn't hear it". Don't lie to me. All the statements could be clearly heard through the audience because a lot of the time it was AFTER the audience had quieted down. This was one of the firs times McCain had a chance to silence such incendiary attacks. However, I get the feeling he saw this as a chance and a once off event. An even that wouldn't happen again at another of his rallies, so it wasn't nothing to concern himself with for the time being. Then in the second rally, I think he was stunned, but didn't think much of it. Now it seems to be a continuous and maintained part of his rallies, he's trying to put an end to it. But as I stated it's far too late. Further more he's getting more and more anger towards the way he's running his campaign by other Republicans, and they're pushing him to stop the rhetoric. However, he continues on with the same flammatory rhetoric at the same time he tries to stop inflammatory responses from his base.

What's even more horrifying with all this is that now his base doesn't believe him. Actually let me be more clear. His base thinks he doesn't want to say the truth (the truth being that Obama is a Muslim/Arab/terrorists and everything else) about Obama because he doesn't want it on tv.

Check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nSdNVFoAMw

So even if he says steadfastly that Obama is a citizen or a person after the common good. The seed has been sown and people's fears and the fake emails or information they get have become solidified as truth, added to the fact of the same hate themed comments coming from the Republican/McCain campaign, we then see that this is way beyond McCain as a whole and he fundamentally contributed to this response.

2. Well at the end of answer one, I already stated that this seed is sown so it is clearly too late here as well. Since the start of the negative campaigning he NEVER showed Obama to be the "enemy" on an opposition level but the "enemy" on a cultural front. He and Palin equited Obama to not only being a terrorist sympathizer, with the Bill Ayers tie that was unfounded, but also to be a terrorist himself. This set up of painting Obama has an "other" as "something foreign" has added to the racist ideology in many of these people added to the post 9/11 hate all things Islam even if the person is not Islamic themselves. McCain dappleed in this sort of attack against Obama during the Primaries along side HRC (who was guilty of doing this without a doubt) then during the summer this was dappled again not only with Obama but also Michelle. Now it's been resurrected and it's been interjected at every single rally for the last 2.5-3 weeks of the rallies with only negative ads doing the same on television. The incite of the base, has clearly been tied to their actions and really what we see with the booing is that McCain can NO LONGER backpedal in this. It's far far far too late for him to do anything about the 3 weeks of negative advertising with the thousands of base attendees with these racist ideas that border on violence.

3. This is a hard one, but because it's too late to the above two I think it's too late to stop any of these base people to not be reactionary in some way to an Obama presidency. I don't want to say these people are neo-nazi's nor will I go as far as to say that it's divided the country. For the first, many of these people are seriously in fear of just Obama himself, not a general fear of Blacks or minorities. Those people really won't be taht reactionary. The people who do have a fear and hatred of minorities added to what they have heard about Obama will make them very reactionary and McCain would have helped to build the neo-nazi base with new recruits. As for the divided country, I'm unsure of what you mean by divided. Mainly because I don't see where we're dividing, by state? By city? By town or parrish? I mean what we'll see is that the more liberal and working class people will probably over look any hang ups about race and meet with the liberals who were always supportive of Obama and join our cause. Republicans with a brain who were disgusted by McCain's action might actually join our side or at least not add to any division. There will be a few people and who are in the minority, that will try to riot or cause some uproar over an Obama presidency. So the real division will be more individualistic than massive mob war fare and we as the liberal or working class front will be supportive of Obama sort of neutralizing their side. I do think there's a division of course and it's too late to mend that separatism. Yet, it's nothing like a civil war division.

a. As stated I think the new actions by McCain dissolve nothing of what he's already done to rile his base and push his agenda. It has backfired in the crazies he's rallied against Obama, and it's far too late to fix it nor will it be enough when many in his base think he's holding back because of political reasons or the television but he knows that Obama IS the "enemy" in all the ways they see it. Him being Muslim/Arab/Black/Terrorism----as seen in the video of the lady at one of the McCain rallies. At the end when she was interviewed she figured McCain knew the truth but didn't want to go there. Just goes to show you.

b. Of course McCain's double messages are dangerous and disingenuous to his base. The man defends or tries to protect Obama in one sense but still pushes the "different" meme every chance he gets. This to me shows how truly out of touch McCain is with his base not to see how he's riling them. Plus it shows how far he'll go to win. If, God forbid, anything should happen to Obama it will lay solely at his feet for pushing this ideology through his rallies. You can't say one thing and then go around and say another. You seem unsure and insincere, it seems as though you're abusing your control by turning the people into puppets through their emotional connections. It's a mess and he is really playing with fire.

[stevenleser]

10. I think what McCain has done is criminal. HE is the traitor...

He needs to try to fix this. I'm talking about after the election. He needs to go around talking up Obama and unity.

[vaberella]

12. I don't think there's much he can do.

As for Obama, that won't happen no matter what. So I wouldn't my breath on that. As for unity, possibly. I think there's a chance we could see that if he doesn't retire outright. Or pretend, as so many of his supporters and surrogates in Washington have, this is just the name of the game.

I really think what the McCain people are hoping for and what McCain is hoping for is that this is all talk but no one is going to do anything at all. I think this is just a few people getting upset and no one is going to do anything. I can see their sort of "de nada" response. However, I never put anything past loud mouth idiots who are above all things angry and scared.

The fear was instilled and it's going to go over board. Unity is probably not going to be something he talks about, although I agree if he says nothing about Obama, he needs to push the idea of unity and dispel people's fears on Obama.

[Undercurrent]

11. Too late.

He's made his bed.
Dug his hole.
Rung the bell.
Pulled the trigger.
Cast the dye.
Sailed the boat.
Soiled himself.
Written his epitaph.


All that is left for the cowardly little asshole is a effort to rehabilitate his pathetic legacy for when he returns to the Senate after the election.

[beac]

13. McCain allowed Palin to hand out pitchforks and torches and then

made a half-hearted attempt to calm the angry mob.

There's an interview on YouTube (and here on DU somewhere) with the older lady who said Obama was an 'Arab.' Even though McCain corrected her, she believes that McCain 'just didn't want to say it out loud but Obama IS a Muslim'-- never mind that the old fool doesn't realize that Arab and Muslim aren't the same thing.

John McCain has NO business lecturing ANYONE about 'judgment' as he's put the conditions in place for HORRIBLE things to happen after Obama is elected.

John McCain is SCUM.