This Is What Happens When You Pander to the Fringe
by
Hitman
10/11/2008, 1:28 PM #
Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 10:30:26 AM PDT
This week we've seen John McCain and Sarah Palin pandering to the furthest Freeper Fringe of the the Republican Party and the Conservative movement. They were openly playing with fire and most of the McCain campaign knew it.
When you imply the other President candidate is a terrorist, or unpatriotic, or somehow "not one of us" you are passing out an engraved invitation to the less than stable people who earnestly believe in conspiracies, and the New World Order, and the Book of Revelation, and who own a lot of guns for violence. Or threats of violence.
From Gawker:
"I'm told the Los Angeles Times mailroom opened a hand-scrawled letter today that read "death to Obama" and contained a white powder that triggered a call to the FBI and a city hazardous materials team."
"No one was injured and the powder proved to be harmless. My sources say the letter was addressed to staff writers Richard Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian and included a demand for a retraction to their story this week that detailed flying mishaps early in John McCain's Navy flying career. The nut mail was said to carry an upside-down stamp and language about saving babies in addition to the Barack Obama threat."
This is exactly the kind of insanity that Sarah Palin invites when she shrieks out here stump speech about William Ayers, or when John McCain puts out the idea that somehow the American Public doesn't "know who Barack Obama is" and leaves the implications of that just float out there. Did McCain and Palin stuff the white powder in the envelope and write the nutty screed? No. But they might as well.
I'm heartened that John McCain seems to be backing off the ledge and attempting to contain the brush fire he just started. But, to mix metaphors, this is like shutting the barn doors after you've lit a cross on fire inside the barn.
