Newsweek Ch 6: Debates, Palin Rallies, McCain Reaction to Lewis, Negative Ads

[RamboLiberal]

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But in other ways she was a little too hot. At the Clearwater rally, someone in the crowd used a racial epithet about a black sound man for NBC, and someone else reportedly yelled "Kill him!" in an ambiguous reference to either Ayers or Obama. By the end of the week, YouTube was showing film clips of Palin crowds shouting "Treason!", "Off with his head!" and "He is a bomb!" At a McCain-Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio, a man called Obama a "one-man terror cell," and in one unsettling film clip a voter's young daughter exclaims about Obama, "You need gloves to touch him!"

Palin, the polls showed, had succeeded in rallying the Republican base. But she, or the simmering anger around her, helped make Obama supporters out of countless independent voters.

On the weekend between the second and third debates, Congressman John Lewis—a civil-rights hero who had been beaten while staging nonviolent protests during the 1960s—issued a press release accusing McCain and Palin of "playing with fire" and seeming to compare McCain to former Alabama governor George Wallace, a segregationist infamous for stirring racial fears. McCain was stunned. He had devoted a chapter to Lewis in one of his books, "Why Courage Matters." He so admired Lewis that he had taken his children to meet him.

McCain was on his bus, about to board a plane in Moline, Ill., when he read the remarks on an aide's BlackBerry. He was so dumbfounded that he held the plane on the tarmac while he considered how to respond. Salter, who had penned the chapter on Lewis, urged McCain to remain more dignified than Lewis had been in his remarks. But Schmidt called in from headquarters brimming with outrage. "Sir," said Schmidt, "he called you a racist. It must be responded to." Nicolle Wallace agreed. Salter was not so sure. He was "very pained" over the incident, Schmidt later recalled about Salter, but his instinct told him not to get his boss into a name-calling fight with a martyr of the civil-rights movement. McCain decided to go with Schmidt and put out a strong statement calling on Obama to "immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments." (Obama left it to a spokesman to blandly state, "Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.")

According to several aides, McCain had trouble shaking his sadness over Lewis's statement. To the reporters traveling with McCain, the candidate seemed uncertain, as if he was not quite sure what he had gotten himself into. In an effort to raise doubts about Obama, McCain had given a stump speech in which he asked the audience, "Who is Barack Obama?" At an earlier rally in Albuquerque a man shouted, "A terrorist!" McCain paused, taken aback. He looked surprised, troubled. But he continued with the speech. (Salter later said McCain wasn't sure that he had heard correctly.)

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"I'm worried," Gregory Craig said to a NEWSWEEK reporter in mid-October. He was concerned that the frenzied atmosphere at the Palin rallies would encourage someone to do something violent toward Obama. He was not the only one in the Obama campaign thinking the unthinkable. The campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and very disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October. Michelle was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" she asked Valerie Jarrett. Several of Obama's friends in the Senate were shocked by the GOP rabble-rousing. Dick Durbin, the U.S. senator from Illinois who pushed for early Secret Service coverage for Obama, called Lindsey Graham, who was traveling with McCain. (Graham scoffed at the call as "an orchestrated attempt to push a narrative" about McCain going negative. He said he told Durbin, "OK, buddy, but remember—that goes both ways.")

http://www.newsweek.com/id/167950

Lots of good stuff in this one.

[woolldog]

1. hey Rambo

have you been able to find Part 7 in this series? I've read all the others but can't find the last installment.

[RamboLiberal]

4. I don't think they posted it yet

Chapters 4, 5 & 6 only came up today. I'm hoping that 7 is posted later tonight or early tomorrow. It is a fascinating bit of reading.

[woolldog]

11. thanks rambo

this stuff makes interesting reading!

[ecstatic]

2. Good to know he was at least pondering the consequences of his actions

even if only behind the scenes. Unlike Sarah Palin who had no understanding of what she was starting and stirring.

[ErinBerin84]

3. McCain's feelings were hurt? Please. Fuck you, McCain.

[RamboLiberal]

6. And fuck Lindsay Graham for his reply to Durbin

And Schmidt for advising McCain to play the aggrieved.

If anything happens to Obama I say they all have blood on their hands including the rabble-rouser Palin.

[indie_voter]

5. YAY! Chapter 6 is up. I've been waiting for this. THANKS! n/t

[ErinBerin84]

7. wow

McCain is not self aware at all!!!! And he was basically doing whatever the hell his handlers told him to.

"To ease the mood before the first debate, McCain's advisers had shown the candidate a YouTube video of Joe Biden awkwardly encouraging a supporter at a rally to stand up—not realizing the man was in a wheelchair. McCain was amused by Biden's amiable talkiness. He was relieved to face him as the veep choice, and not Hillary Clinton, whom the McCain camp had truly feared. At the vice presidential debate on Oct. 2, McCain was delighted to see that Sarah Palin had irritated Biden. Watching the TV with some aides, McCain exclaimed, "He looks like an angry old senator!" The staffers were awkwardly silent, unsure if McCain appreciated the irony of his statement and hoping that he would experience a flash of self-recognition in time for his own performance in debate No. 2, just five days away."

also ....just the image of Graham stumbling into a hotel room was something I didn't need.

" As usual with the McCain campaign, Joe the Plumber had more to do with impulse than planning. As Lindsey Graham told the story, he had been awakened at 4:30 on the morning of the final debate. It was McCain on the phone. "I can't sleep," said the candidate. "Well, now neither can I," said a sleepy Graham. He stumbled on down to McCain's hotel room. McCain was vibrating with nervous energy, rehearsing his lines on his least favorite subject, the economy. He was racing through a section on taxes, not really paying attention to the words, and said, "Obama will raise taxes, raise taxes on ordinary folks like Joe the Plumber." Graham perked up, as did Cindy, who was sitting there patiently with her agitated husband. "John, what was that you just said?" Cindy asked. "About the plumber?" Lindsey added. The three spent the rest of the session talking about how to work him into the debate."

[Pirate Smile]

8. I haven't read it all but this tidbit cracked me up.

Nothing seemed to rattle Obama. He had a way of retreating into his own little world. During one of the debate preps, the lights blew, flickering on and off like a strobe light from the 1970s disco craze. Obama stood behind the podium, quietly singing the song "Disco Inferno," last popular in the heyday of "Saturday Night Fever."

[ErinBerin84]

10. hehe, I loved that too.

[stillcool]

9. Ah..no one knew?...

McCain was completely unaware that they were whipping the hillbilly crowds into a frenzy, screaming kill him, terrorist etc., even as he himself continuously asked 'Who is Obama?' and got the terrorist replies. Got it!

[mwei924]

12. You gotta love Dick Durbin. He's always looking out for Obama.