The Republicans have lifted the lid off their rightwing id
Now McCain's supporters are casting Obama as anti-American. This may well scare voters, but not the way they mean to Michael Tomasky
The Guardian, Monday October 20 2008
A year or two ago, if you'd told me that Barack Obama would be leading John McCain by a seemingly comfortable margin with two weeks to go and asked me what, in their desperation, the Republicans would be talking about to try and scare my fellow Americans into voting against him, I'd have said race. After all, Republicans have race-baited in one form or other in most of our presidential contests since Richard Nixon's time, so it would have seemed impossible to me that they'd miss the chance to do so at a time when Democrats had actually gone to the trouble of nominating an African-American candidate.
It's true that we're hearing racial-code talk here and there. But the main fear tactic being employed now is something else. It's that Obama and his associates - and for that matter his supporters and even the regions of the country that he's destined to carry - are anti-American.'
Last Friday, in North Carolina, Sarah Palin told a rally that she was proud to be "with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation". She means here of course that there are anti-American areas of America, and they are where the liberals live, and the people there are voting for Mr Anti-America.
This was especially interesting coming from a woman whose husband, Todd Palin, was until just six years ago an enrolled member of a rightwing fringe political party that wanted the state of Alaska to secede from the US. But if you understand rightwing logic, then you'd know that Mr Palin had no choice but to join the Alaska Independence party in 1995, because by that time the America he thought he knew and loved had been brought to ruin by the liberals and socialists and America-haters. See?
Likewise, earlier this month, Joe McCain, the brother of John, said that Alexandria and Arlington, the two major cities in the northern Virginia suburbs that lie just across the Potomac River from Washington, were "communist country" as far as he was concerned. His brother lives in Arlington when in the nation's capital for work, and his brother's campaign is headquartered there as well, but never mind. A McCain spokeswoman offered a wan apology at the time, but lo and behold, just last Saturday a different McCain spokes-woman said on television that while Obama would perform well in northern Virginia, "the rest of the state - real Virginia if you will - I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message". This did not seem a planned one-liner. The spokeswoman made the fatal error of saying what she actually thinks. Republican Virginia equals real Virginia. Democratic Virginia is alien and impure. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/commentanddebate-john-mccain-barack-obama
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