US General Election: McCain vs. Obama

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No, i don't think barack is a terrorist however he has in the past(& possibly still) associate with a known terrorist, Bill Ayers.
No matter how you spin it this man bombed american government buildings & is to this day unrepentant for his actions.

You are judged not just by your actions but by the company you keep & baracks' choice of friends & mentors disturbs me greatly.

 

Chandos, no one has accused him of being a terrorist, and no one has said he should be killed. Where you get this, I don't know.

 

Because I took the time to read the link that AM posted:

Obama may be the first black president. What do you think are the odds that there will an attempt at the unthinkable? They don't need to encouarge it.

 

While I would not myself say something like "kill him" in a public debate, you hear stuff like this all the time when there is strong emotion -- like at a sports game. I've heard people say things like "Kill him! Knock his block off! Send 'em packing in body bags!"

It's obviously figurative language for winning. I have yet to see any plausible evidence that either McCain or Palin or any respectable Republican would seriously encourage an assassination attempt on Obama or any other American citizen.

I've heard this fear that someone is going to take a shot at Obama, and while it is possible for any politician to be targetted by an assassin, I don't think it's much more likely for him than for any other politician.

 

There was a fairly funny video clip of one of the presidental nominees from a couple months back making a joke about it.
Don't remember which one but he was at a podium & there was a loud crash of some type of furniture noise & the nominee looked to his left then said "it's just obama diving under a chair, he thought he saw a gunman".
This was right after hillarys really strange kennedy assassination comments

 

Regarding Mac, he has already made an attempt to calm the crowds down a bit, because he, in the heat of the campaign, sees the problem; Palin is clueless - she's too busy enjoying all the national attention for herself. She's too consumed with her own personal ambitions to give a flip.

I'm sure Mac doesn't want to see Obama get assassinated. I still believe that Mac is a genuinely decent, good natured person, even if he has sold out to the RNC.

And yeah, I've heard the talk here in Texas from all the conservative rednecks - stuff like, "Someone will get Obama" or, "the Klan has hired a hit squad to take him out." And I'm not saying that all conservatives think this way.

It's scary talk, at least for some of us because of JFK, RFK and MLK. Some idiot even took a shot at Ronald Reagan. It's serious stuff here, not like a "sports game." Take a moment to read the link, LKD.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27130171/

 

Actually as far as I can undestand MaCain talked very positively about Obama in one of his latest speeches and was boo'ed out by the crowd.
Anyhows the way Obama's race constantly comes up in the election campaings openly or more subtly is quite disgusting.
here is a link that disprove some of the claims http://www.fightthesmears.com/

 

I hope you're right. I found his 'rebuke' too lukewarm to feel comfortable about it. Why did he do it, because the Secret Service complained, or a sane Republican? Palin said nothing. Is that a tacit endorsement? Sorry, but simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.

McCain ought to get his dogs under control.

That sentence about killing was not figuratively spoken. The only thing that was missing was torches and pitchforks and a length of rope. These people are out for blood. And they have been incited by the GOP & GOP surrogate campaign in this. People don't get that way all by themselves, not even in masses. Professional as they are I presume the GOP was using warming up agitators, as they would do in a talk show? Who were these 'folks'?

I have viewed the clips of several of the recent GOP events and what struck me was all that hissing and booing whenever trigger words like 'Obama' 'New York Times' 'Liberal' fell, suggesting hostility towards anything other. I cannot come to a different conclusion. These are nativist know nothings. They howl for Obama's blood. Is this Conservatism?

For them there is no difference between Europe, Asia, Middle East - it's all 'other'. 'Liberals', San Francisco, Hispanics, Chinese, gays are also 'other'. They cannot imagine a Christian Arab because it goes beyond their stereotypes. They use 'Hussein' as a swear word? If that rabble is McCain's base in this election, God bless America, she needs it more than ever.

 

Ragusa, Chandos, you guys are the ones a bit out of line here. Thinking to hold the candidates responsable for what voters say? Are you going to hold Obama responsable for the liberal comedian who said her friends would gang-rape Palin if she came to New York? As far as I know, neither Obama nor Biden have called her out on it. Nothing I've seen actually indicates that Palin has in any way encouraged these people other than to say the usual talk about how the other candidate isn't safe. If you honestly think this is really related specifically to his possible association with a terrorist, you're not paying attention.

 

No, I don't hold McCain accountable for what those nutters say.

It is my expectation that those campaign events have politically reliable participants and speakers, and are scripted and prepared. I think that the people are being brought into the right mood so that the candidate, when he comes, will look good. There is very little accident in this:

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What he said aside - a cop, in uniform, holding a political speech in favour of a candidate strikes me as questionable. Cops serve the citizenry, not a party or a candidate.

But here is my point: I don't hold McCain accountable for the attitude of his supporters. I hold him responsible for his campaign. I see this as the result of negative campaigning by the GOP and their unofficial or independent surrogates (Watch attack ads, listen to talk radio and look at the usual web sites and you get the idea) that produces such reactions. Now that is something McCain does have influence on.

McCain as a candidate ought to do something against it. Like speaking out against this 'I'm afraid Of Barak Hussein Obama, Muslim and Terrorist' nonsense. Now McCain made a start when cutting off those nutters in the 'townhall meeting'. Little from Palin so far, just this bit here that suggests she likes it:

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NOG - Palin is clueless on most of this. She is handed her talking points by the RNC and told to go out and work the crowd. What do think all this campaign stomping is about? The idea is to "fire-up" the base, to get out the vote of the base. In this instance, the RNC talking points are to create fear that Obama is some kind of closet terrorist, that he associates with known terrorists. To reinforce this notion they toss around his middle name, Hussein, at these "rallies." He has an Arab name = a Muslim terrorist.

As for me being "out of line," if you have the gall to defend this kind of behavior, it doesn't say much for where you are willing to draw the line in defense of your fellow Republicans. Did you even notice my comments about how Mac has made an attempt to calm down some of the "lynch the traitor now" mentality of the crowd? At least Mac has the good sense to recognize the problem.

No, it's not ok. The "gentleman" in question is under investigation for his comments in uniform.

 

Chandos, did you even read what I wrote? I'm not defending the people calling Obama a terrorist, or calling for his death, they're nuts. I'm defending Palin for legitimately pointing out a connection that was ignored by the media in the early days of Obama's campaign without investigation. What I'm saying is that psychos are psychos and they exist in every group and the presidential candidate who is looking to a group for support isn't responsable for what the psychos do.

I'd really suggest you take off the Rep-hating glasses, now, they seem to be inducing paranoid delusions.

Ragusa, you actually responded to what I wrote, and well. I'd love to respond to what you wrote, but it seems to be a commentary on those videos and my slow internet doesn't like them.

 

Of course, I read it. Obviously you didn't read my post, because I blamed the RNC. You are saying that Palin is not responsible for her own rhetoric. How can a clueless person be? The RNC can mention Barak "Hussein" Obama in their introduction and that's just fine and dandy if someone takes that as an implication of Obama being an "Arab terrorist," because that's not really what they are saying (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Do think Palin did an investigation herself into Obama's past? Who do you think did? I blamed the RNC for taking this strategy, not Palin. As I already commented, and I don't know how much clearer I can make it: Palin is clueless, she is handed her talking points by Republican strategists.

And really, we've already discussed the whole "connection" issue here, and you take it as if we all agree that it's a legitimate issue for this campaign. Sorry, but some of us don't think it is. You should take your own advice, read other people's posts and take off your Obama "hating glasses."

 

Chandos,
don't confuse the issue The RNC and the McCain campaign are two different legal entities. For ethical reasons they're even in parallel universes. That is why Karl Rove and the RNC have nothing to do with the McCain campaign. Rove for instance works on the RNC program to elect a Republican candidate as president, whereas the McCain campaign wants to elect McCain. This concept is also known as 'implausible deniability'.

 

A somewhat different take.

NOG, Chandos isn't suffering paranoia-induced delusions. Really.

 

I pulled this from AM's link:

AM - The hardcore, faithful, never wanted Mac in the first place. Is it any wonder that at a critical time in the election, fellow Republican, Karl, sticks the knife in Mac's back with this?

I mean really, the GOP is way more disciplined than that. Mac had tried to explain this at the "townhall meeting" debate, trying to show that he had given some thought to an economic plan. And good, ole' Karl pulls the rug out from under him by explaining that it was "impulsive." Great.

Palin is postitioning herself within the GOP as the likely 2012 candidate. By that time, she will be better prepared and may have given some actual thought to a national aganda; Mac has been at this for 10 years and if he had not sold out to these back-stabbers in the RNC, he would more than likely be on his way to winning next month. Instead he will probably lose. He and Hillary seem to sharing the same fate in this election by losing out to the "new blood" within their respective parties.

But the opportunistic Palin will still be around, unfortunately. Too bad she won't go back to shooting moose from her airplane, or whatever it is she does for fun. Mac was really too much of a class act for the likes of her anyway. And where have all these ACORN talking points been coming from that are exploding all over the conservative media? From the RNC, of course:

http://www.gop.com/obamaacorntree/

 

Chandos -- I've felt all along only McCain had even a remote chance of winning for the Republicans. Bush is simply too great of a liability for the party.

Against any other republican candidate, the democrats had a 99.999% chance of winning (IMO).

 

T2,
it's much more than just Bush. All that crap and just one a**? And it's not about McCain either, for that matter. In today's GOP he's a relic, a moderate conservative, or a centrist Yuck! That explains why he had to bring in Sarah Palin. She really offers a glimpse to the root of the GOPs troubles. To David Brooks Palin represents a lethal cancer on the Republican party. That's a hard verdict coming from a conservative. But he can speak for himself:

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What he sees at the problem is the GOP's class struggle (that's not a socialist domain). Think of Sarah Palin's 'folksyness', her brand of populism and who her audience is. It's also about that tiresome spiel of pitting conservative vs. liberal - 'Joe Sixpack' vs. 'The Elites' - all the time and framing each and every issue accordingly, reality be damned. I mean, does that nonsense convince you anymore? It makes me involuntary squirm whenever I hear an American conservative use the word 'Liberal'. Is the current economic crisis about liberals vs. conservatives? You betcha! No, arguably not, and drumming that theme won't solve anything. And of course voters notice that, and of course this relentless drumming on partisan divides convinces them less each time they hear it.

Read Brook's assessment on the GOP's malaise: The Class War before Sarah Palin. If he is right, and he makes a good case, then it has been a generation of Republican strategists who steered the GOP at the wall, with Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich probably being only the most renowned of the bunch. It would also make sense in a Hegelian way - from full and complete control in their heyday in 2001 to their probable defeat now - it can be read as dialectic at work, but it's probably elitist to say that Herb Stein put it shorter when he said: "Things that can’t go on forever don’t."

 

AMaster, all your NYTimes link tells me is that Chandos isn't the only one. The things I saw most criticized in that article were legitimate arguements. Like using terrorists, plural. Guess what, Ayer's wife was a member of the Weather Underground, too, and she's a friend, too. Similarly, for the attacks leveled at Obama for claiming our troops in Afganistan were just 'air raiding villages and killing civilians', well, he did. He said it in a context that they can't do anything else and he want's to change that, but he still said it.

As far as I can tell, the only new controvercy recently is ACORN. All the others have been around for a while and Clinton was as want to bring them up in the primaries as Palin is today. The only difference is Palin is getting more attention. Now, while I think the first is a legitimate talking point, the second is taking advantage of a misstep by Obama, and is dirty politics as usual. I don't like it.

From your Times Online link:

This is one thing that I respect McCain for, even if it will likely loose him the election. He's done his best to run a clean and honourable campaign. He's avoided the questionable issues like Obama's verbal missteps, and even avoided issues like Rev. Wright, even if I think that one is fair game. McCain has tried to keep this on the topic of issues more than anything else, and that's quite likely to loose him the election. Too bad the old soldier can't seem to be anything but.

Ragusa, framing an election as 'one of you' against an 'insider', 'elite', or 'socialite' is a political tactic that has worked for decades. Both parties have taken advantage of it, and the current democratic movement got a big push from it, what, about 30 years ago? The only problem for them is that the perception of power and corruption has largely shifted from those in political positions to those with money, especially west-coast money, which is more the Dems than the Reps at the moment. Thus the Rep's attempts to paint Obama as an elitist (not entirely inacurate, but who in politics isn't?). It's not really right to cry foul this late in to the game.

 

If McCain is up to losing honourably, kudos for that, then he is just rising considerably in my eyes.

As for your reply: I do not heap blame on the R's for relying extensively on wedge issues and partisan themes. I don't like it, but I don't blame them, and I'm not crying foul either. I don't like it because it is about playing politics and not about solutions. That said, what I did try to point out is that it doesn't work any more, because in face of the current situation the dysfunctionality of that approach becomes obvious. The base that resonates to that old, tired tune has shrunk to a size that doesn't bring majorities any more.

What ticks off old school conservatives like Will and Brooks is that for the remaining base reasoning, education, science are scorned and ignorance and gut feeling cherished. Conservatives used to be more cerebral back in the 1980s when the 'Reagan Revolution' took place. A single look at a Sarah Palin clip and her 'folksiness' should convince you to ponder on that thought.