McCain calls on Obama to repudiate ‘shocking’ Lewis comments
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama,” wrote the Democrat.
[ ]…But the Arizona senator blasted the congressman’s remarks, and called on Obama to repudiate them. “Congressman John Lewis’ comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale,” he said in a Saturday afternoon statement released by his campaign.
McCain, Palin and their supporters have accused Senator Obama of “paling” around with terrorists, but what Lewis said is “beyond the pale”. Conservative sensibilities and values are anything, but consistent. Obama has condemned what McCain sees as a direct comparison, even though that is not what Lewis did,
“Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States ‘pals around with terrorists.
Lewis’s point was clear enough. That some of the hate speech by the Republican candidates and their supporters evokes an atmosphere of hatred rather then discussion of the issues. No one expects highly partisan crowds at rallies to like the opposition or to be absent of insults – that’s politics as we know it for now. McCain’s idolaters have made rabid accusations of ‘terrorist’, ‘off with his head’ , ‘Arab’ -clearly meant as a racial epitaph, the always reliable ‘kill him’. One guy showed up with a monkey doll with an Obama bumper sticker wrapped around the head, looking very pleased with himself – if anyone believes all these incidents don’t add up to a George Wallace-like scene I have a sub-prime loan to sell you at full value. So far Obama has condemned Ayers multiple times and condemned Rev Wright’s speech. We’re all still waiting for McCain to condemn John Hagee, McCain “Proud” of Endorsement From John Hagee Who Calls Catholics “The Great Whore.” and radical right-wing Televangelist Rod Parsley who has said that Planned Parenthood are Nazis and people, ironically like McCain, that commit adultery should be thrown in jail.
The media’s enduring pro-McCain double standard
Let’s start with Bill Ayers, since the news media have spent much of the week obliging McCain’s efforts to make him the focus of the campaign. As an activist in the 1960s — when Barack Obama was a young child — Bill Ayers was a member of the Weathermen, a group of radical activists who launched a series of violent demonstrations and bombings in protest of the Vietnam War. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a school reform advocate. During Obama’s first campaign, Ayers hosted a coffee for him, and the two men have served together on the board of a school reform effort funded by a foundation chaired by Leonore Annenberg, who has endorsed John McCain. The New York Times concluded that Obama and Ayers “do not appear to have been close,” and Obama has denounced Ayers’ actions as a member of the Weathermen.
The media has completely ignored the dark absurdity that the funding on which Ayers, Obama and a few Republicans received on the school reform project came from a Republican’s foundation. Walter Annenberg was friends with Nixon and Reagan, and the last presidential candidate he gave to was George W. Bush. The only major blog post I’ve seen is this one a Dkos, The Annenberg Foundation – McCain and Terrorist Financers. David Kearns, who currently works for the McCain camp education adviser to Annenberg Foundation was one of the Republicans that approved the grant from which Ayers benefited. If Obama “paled” around with Ayers, these Republicans financed it. So there’s something else can renounce at the renounce-athon, his crazy scurrilous attempts to link Senator Obama to someone who committed crimes when Obama was eight years old. Well, Ok FactCheck has finally gotten around to checking out the Ayers story, “He Lied” About Bill Ayers?
Other claims are seriously misleading. The education project described in the Web ad, far from being “radical,” had the support of the Republican governor and was run by a board that included prominent local leaders, including one Republican who has donated $1,500 to McCain’s campaign this year. The project is described by Education Week as reflecting “mainstream thinking” about school reform.
Despite the newly released records, there’s still no evidence of a deep or strong “friendship” with Ayers, a former radical anti-war protester whose actions in the 1960s and ’70s Obama has called “detestable” and “despicable.”
The other day Mccain said in reference to Obama, “He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.” he seems to want to have it both ways or multiple ways. McCain’s campaign and his surrogates want to be free to launch libelous attacks at will, but not take responsibility for them. Day after day Democrats do not have to rise questions about John McCain’s integrity, he does a very good job of that himself. A tendency that would no doubt follow him into the Whitehouse. As of today the candidate whose campaign is supported by monkey doll carriers and people that have wet dreams about Obama’s death, is up to 131 lies.
Predictable, and tiresomely so that the hate spewers and apologists for McCain would drag out the, but they did it too defense, TNR’s Michael Crowley: McCain lynch mobs are no different than Bush critics
But as anyone with eyes can see, that’s not what is happening — not even close. Crowley’s characteristic TNR need to receive “even-liberal-TNR-admits” praise from the Right (and the head pats are piling up already) leads him to assert some plainly false and just morally perverse equivalencies.
The mass accusations of “terrorist” and “Arab traitor” against Obama didn’t just get randomly blurted out by a few hard-core, isolated ideologues. Rather, that is exactly the message being spewed systematically from McCain and Palin themselves (“pallin’ around with terrorists”), their parade of ads, and the coordinated efforts of opinion-leaders on the Right. Even veteran campaign reporters for whom Balance is a religion have been acknowledging that the McCain/Palin rallies are unique in their mass-crowd vitriol and intense rage.
Can Crowley point to a single statement or ad from John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, or a single Kerry/Edwards rally, that is remotely comparable to any of this?
As Glenn notes only the blindest of partisans would argue that both sides, each and every member is an angel every day. McCain, Palin and the McCain-Palin crowds have crossed way over the line. There are degrees of dislike and hate. The Right is way up in the unhinged zone.
The Long Goodbye 
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