Don’t Ever Put Down The Pen!

The Republican Hate Machine is just getting warmed up with this new version of Swift-boating. We might call it “Getting Hucked” since Mike Huckabee reminded us how to do it this campaign season. First you make some wild accusation, or slanderous attack ad and next thing is after showing it to the press you disavow it. This way gets you both the message and the high ground. Huckabee used it effectively several times. Remember when in South Carolina, he called a press conference to show an attack ad against Romney and after they viewed it he said his campaign had decided not to run it? Remember when he made his comments about Romney’s Mormonism and then apologized? That’s how they do it….

Now from the McCain front comes a most scurrilous attack. They allow radio talk-show host, Bill Cunningham to introduce the candidate. He himself is introduced as “an extremely important part of John McCain’s presidential campaign” Then for many excruciatingly long minutes he harangues and derides Barack Obama as a terrorist sympathizer and repeatedly saying his middle name “Hussein”. He calls him a crook and a liar. See the video here,
Then just minutes later after the words introducing the candidate are picked up by the press and after John McCain is cheered by the enthusiastic crowd does the campaign issue a repudiation of the remarks. Sorry, the damage is done. The racist hatred has been fomented and cannot be revoked or forgotten by a mere apology. If they don’t want his message to get to the hearts of their wavering base why even let him on the stage?
In no way do I think John McCain thinks these things about Obama, nor do I mean to impugn his character, but everybody who knows this guy knows what he is going to say. They KNOW, and still they pander to their far right-wing base, get their message out and then they disavow it. It’s brilliant, and it works every time. So now Obama just got Hucked. It won’t be the last time the right wing hate machine lets go a good one.

John McCain may not be a racist, he may not be a demagogue and he is most certainly a Patriot of the first order, but by allowing these sorts of people to participate prominently in his campaign his managers give us a very clear view inside the tent that they call Republican and the direction they want to take the country.
Bill Clinton did not make this contest about race, the far right-wing did. That’s the way they want it because it’s the only way they know to defeat a candidate as good as Obama.
If Obama is the Democratic nominee and if he is elected, we can look forward to at least four years of this tripe just like they gave us eight years of the same mindless, hateful drivel during the Clinton years. Fact is, there was no there there then and there is no there there now. But I do love the First Amendment and so I will suffer this in the pursuit of the Ideal. This ideal is what makes America a great nation. The worst about America is what some people do with it.