The Occasional Nut

From the New York Times:

"I think there have been quite a few reporters recently who have sort of implied, or made more than implications, that somehow we’re responsible for the occasional nut who shows up and yells something about Barack Obama," Mr. McCain’s closest adviser, Mark Salter, said. "We’re not."

I certainly don't think political campaigns should be held responsible for everything their supporters say, but in the context of the last two weeks, this deflection of responsibility by the McCain campaign is ridiculous. As Time's Michael Scherer put it:

The problem for McCain--and the nation--is that McCain's campaign message now systematically encourages voters to believe that Obama is secretly something awful.

Scherer quite correctly points out that:

As it stands, McCain's effort to paint Obama as awful appears to be stirring up widespread racial, religious and xenophobic prejudices which are not acceptable.

And while McCain himself tried to walk back the rhetoric somewhat the other night, the message is clearly not filtering down to the rest of his campaign. The commercials haven't changed. McCain's surrogates, including his running mate, continue to hammer away. And yesterday in Iowa, a pastor gave the following invocation at McCain's campaign rally:

"I also would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god--whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah--that [McCain's] opponent wins, for a variety of reasons."

This is completely unacceptable and incendiary stuff, and its being taken even farther at the ground level. Karen Tumulty at Time reports the following:

With so much at stake, and time running short, [Virginia Republican Party Chairman Jeff] Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.

This is the kind of stuff that McCain's own campaign staff is trafficking in. They are actively trying to foster and encourage the very beliefs that they are, at the same time, claiming are only the views of "occasional nuts."

The press should not allow them to have it both ways. While I understand the political need for the Obama campaign to distance itself from John Lewis' comments, Lewis is absolutely right. The McCain campaign is playing with fire. They are actively and intentionally encouraging racism, xenophobia, and wildly paranoid and inaccurate beliefs about who Barack Obama is. It's dangerous and if it's not stopped, it may well lead to violence. It is several orders of magnitude more serious and more reckless than even the most despicable tactics used by Republicans in recent presidential elections.  When something bad happens, it will look crystal clear in retrospect what led to it.  We shouldn't have to wait for that to happen.