Sen. Graham: John Lewis Is "Playing The Race Card"

Jesus, how many times have we gone through this "You calling us racist in fact means that you are playing the race card!" "No, the proclamation of a race card being played is in fact the race card!" shit?

McCain Finally Gets It 'Right' on Obama’s Guilty Associations
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=3933

Graham's response is ludicrous. As was the McCain campaign's response that the Obama campaign was in fact, attacking voters when he said "It's easy to get people riled up."

Good luck with that, gentlemen. You wanna explain why a McCain supporter was waving around an Obama "monkey" at a McCain rally? Hmmmmm?

Can somebody please do an expose on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)? There's something really fishy about that guy. He's just a tagalong with everything McCain does. He always says incendiary things and no one calls him on it. He has no gravitas. He's always in the background at McCain events eating the free food.

There's something wrong with that little guy, and enquiring minds want to know!!

Davis was also on one of the Sunday Funnies today and brought up the ol'POW card, saying to the effect that while George Wallace was spewing his venom, McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton. The last person I'm going to listen to is a Rep. from South Carolina lecture on the playing of the race card.

Besides it wasn't just Rep. Lewis who called out McCain/Palin for exactly what they were doing, there was Republicans who stood up and called it what it was.

What about Virginia GOP Head telling volunteers to compare Obama to Osama when going door-to-door as "both had friends that bombed the Pentagon" ( http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849422,00.html )

Or Bay Buchanen saying that Obama was probably a drug dealer on CNN.

Remember that racist with the Curious George doll with Obama sticker that CBS caught on camera who then tried to hide the doll, before giving it to a kid he didn't know and playing the friendly old grampa? Well he wasn't as camera shy outside the event - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKUovpF9LWU

So John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton when Wallace was spewing his shit? That's your argument? Barack Obama was an eight-year-old when Bill Ayres was trying to foment a revolution in the US -- not very effectively, it might be noted.

I mean, I've given up expection any sort of intellectual integrity from the radical right, but a bit of simple consistency might be nice. Of course, that's not how they work. Like bully boys throughout history, they just lie to your face and dare you to defend the truth. It's not about argument and truth with these guys but about power. You can see the joy on the faces of guys like Schmidt and Bounds and the rest when they tell a bald-faced lie. It gives them pleasure. In the Republican universe, lying is a positive value. Amorality is a virtue.

This Lindsay Graham stuff is what "Liam" was worried about yesterday.

I still don't think it will be all that effective. But, there is a strong belief among some strategists that, when your opponent is black, it is advantageous to talk about race and try and tap into some of that white rage. Maybe I am being too optmistic, but I don't think this works all that well.

It is just so rich that they would claim reverse racism, after the way they have campaigned

I predict that West Virginia votes Obama in 2008.

The Obama/Biden camp is spending a helluva lot of time in Pennsylvania - it HAS to be polling closer internally than the public polls are showing.

Otherwise a Biden/Bill/Hillary rally in Ohio would have made much more sense.

Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis [says] "Our message, the campaign's message, isn't connecting."

What message?  I don't hear anything resembling a coherent message coming from McSame & Co.

Actually, Senator Graham, the campaign can be held responsible for "what one person says at a rally." Even for two.

The non-negotiable point is that the campaign is responsible for what McCain says, for what Palin says, for what he fails to say, and for what she fails to say.

Further, while they can't actually prevent the opening acts from getting out of control, neither one of them has to walk out onto a stage if the previous speaker has covered it in filth.

That's what they're responsible for. Senator, you know that perfectly well.

Did anyone else notice that the McCain campaign's "back[ing] away Minister's Rally Invocation" actually does something the minister didn't do: imply that Obama is a muslim? The minister said that other religions--and listed several of them--were playing for Obama to win for "various reasons." He did not say that Obama was not a Christian, just that non-Christians wanted him to win.

Here is the McCain "retraction:"

“While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama's judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief,” said McCain campaign spokesperson Wendy Riemann.

And their alleged objection is not the error of the Minister's (non-existent) claim that Obama is a muslim, but, instead, that bringing up the idea that Obama is a muslim is a distraction from more important issues. They didn't back away, they doubled down.

(THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS BEHAVIOR FROM GOP CHAIRMAN JEFF FREDERICK)

"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."

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/10/a_view_from_the_ground.html

(It is a Shame that the GOP Party has to resort to lying, cheating and stealing in order to try and keep power in their hands and in the hands of their Rich friends. The American people deserve more from their leaders -- truth, honesty and integrity, something sorely lacking in the GOP Party!)

From:

Head of State

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/10/paranoid-style-meets-issue-of-race-in.html

Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Paranoid Style Meets The Issue of Race In American Politics

Richard Hofstadter's seminal article "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" portrayed, for the first time with widespread impact, the insular and delusional suspiciousness that characterizes much of the "critique", if it can be called that, of the far right and, at times, of the extreme left.

Standing just one notch away from pure delusion--and often not even hewing that distance--and embracing those whose functionality--such as it may be--is supported by and compels the repetition of these fantasies, we see this style in every electoral cycle, manifesting itself, remarkably anew, in new minds, with the same characteristic conspiratorial thinking--the grasping of an ambiguous, or equally likely, unresearched but conspiratorial-sounding detail or name--into a grand plan, foggy in specifics but surely--as it has assumed its premise--secretly lurching towards an all powerful hegemony.

As always, they give people too much credit. As always, they are among the bitter powerless, whose manifest lack of explanation for that lack of power turns itself into a bitter projection--if they can't have it, their secret masters must, and so on. It gives them a path to power through projection--they see the secret truth, and gain power through it's proclamation--thus "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", thus the "Clinton Chronicles", thus "9/11 Truth", etc.

Each election the impulse forces itself to burgeon anew, straining to fit facts to its preexisting need, straining to grow into the dark.

Now--it becomes interesting.

Here--we have a candidate whose power combines with the fact that he is the first of a long oppressed minority to rise to this position. How, we might ask, will this impulse find a way to strain itself upwards towards conspiratorial theories of all embracing power? A challenge to the force of the delusion impulse.

In the last few weeks, we have been seeing the development of this narrative.

Touch him with the brush of radicalism--despite the fact that Obama's adult life story has been one of consensus-building and unifying--a clear and deliberate move towards the shared need, and away from the radical fringe. The key has been to forge the conspiratorial, paranoid impulse with racial fears, to create the combined message: You don't know who he really is.

As in: "Who really is Barack Obama?"

This lights the torch to the paranoid style in full force, turning it upon ill-formed objects--Bill Ayers, ACORN, that by their mere sound and invocation, can be whipped by this eternal historical force into a storm of hatred. To those prone to such thinking, these become absolute evidence, touchstones, the words they have been waiting for.

For the conspiratorialist, the obvious and central characteristic of Obama's personality--the move to unify, which is inherent in his speech, actions and development, is--as is so often the case in this style--evidence of its opposite. Of course, if he were in fact a radically divisive figure, this would also serve as evidence of the same "radical" characteristic. That's the paranoid style--either it's there, or it's masterfully hidden: Heads I win, tails you lose (at least until medicated).

You likely have seen this kind of thinking developing on the outer edges of the message boards and twittering over recent months.

However, it was only with the cementing of the McCain-Palin team that the style has begun to grow into its fuller portrayal. Each of the two essential elements of the admixture is used to reinforce the other--"Radicalism"--Bill Ayers, ACORN--provides license, justification and cover to those who experience a deeper prejudice, and that very prejudice leads those who experience it to draw in unexamined, tangential "evidence" to prove to themselves or others his inauthenticity or "radicalism."

McCain, and to a greater extent Palin, have used this admixture at rallies to attempt to create some form of enthusiasm in the electorate. It has proven to be a volatile mixture, this new alloy of the paranoid style, and, in their efforts to provide some spark to a moribund campaign, they have been unable to keep this lightning in the bottle.

The remarkable and horrifying shouts we have heard over the past weeks did not originate with this campaign--but they were liberated by it, allowing this raw and stark version of the paranoid style to be unleashed by and feed off of these insinuations. We have seen this kind of visceral unleashing of the paranoid style, driven by fear and the impulsive, momentary, compensatory power of stereotypic hatred before, in other nations. Not here, and not in this way.

There are limits to winning--and losing--ugly. And there are ways to fan and contain the paranoid style. I suspect that Plain believes that she is speaking the plain truth to these audiences--and that there is a plain truth to be spoken, and that she already knows what it is--and no more.

It is John McCain's responsibility to put this darker manifestation of a dangerous and unnecessary dybbyk back in the bottle. I can see he understands what has been released--and perhaps would wish to retain just those parts that could meet his ambitions, without its consequent furies.

Just as you would rather lose an election than lose a war, John--I believe that you would rather lose an election than to unleash, justify, imprint and allow this distorted vision on this society. It was not you, it is not you, and it should not be you or us. Consider it your newest, and your best, call to courage.

Cite:

Head of State

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/10/paranoid-style-meets-issue-of-race-in.html

I'll ask the question yet again:

"WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH OHIO?"