The GOP goes back to its ugly roots - salon.com

[cui bono]

The GOP goes back to its ugly roots

McCain is resurrecting the GOP's oldest tactic: Smearing Obama as a scary black terrorist sympathizer. But he may meet the same fate as Barry Goldwater.

By Gary Kamiya


Oct. 7, 2008 | The End of Days is approaching for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and at least one member of the ticket is not likely to greet this development with religious rapture. Their numbers are tanking. Their campaign has had to pull out of Michigan, and they are trailing in most of the battleground states they must hold onto. Even Karl Rove has predicted an Obama win if the election were held today. McCain's hotheaded behavior during the Wall Street crisis and his numerous other erratic tactical swerves have backfired. And his biggest gamble, choosing Sarah Palin as vice president, is increasingly looking like a disaster.

McCain's all-too-predictable response: get ugly, as he did on Monday is his disturbing rant against Obama in New Mexico.

The man who incessantly talks about "honor" has checked his own at the door. Back in April, McCain -- himself the victim of a vicious, race-baiting smear campaign orchestrated by Karl Rove in 2000 -- disavowed a North Carolina ad attacking Obama for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's not the message of the Republican Party," McCain said. "It's not the message of my campaign. I've pledged to conduct a respectful campaign."

But that was before McCain faced imminent defeat. His "pledge" has turned out to be about as credible as his sudden incarnation as a lifelong enemy of Wall Street. On Monday, McCain rolled out a new TV ad, "Dangerous," that accuses Obama of being "dishonorable." "Who is Barack Obama?" a narrator ominously asks. "He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable."

Of course, this is an outrageous smear. Obama was simply pointing out the well-known fact that in fighting an insurgency, over-reliance on air power is counterproductive. That's because airstrikes inevitably result in civilian deaths, which turn the population against the side carrying them out. U.S. airstrikes and the ensuing civilian casualties are one of the biggest points of contention between the U.S. and Hamid Karzai's regime in Afghanistan, and they are a huge issue in Pakistan and Iraq as well.

But none of those facts matter, because McCain desperately needs to paint Obama as a traitor, an alien, a defeatist, and un-American. The rhetorical question "Who is Barack Obama?" is not accidental: It is intended to raise fundamental doubts about whether he is a real American. It ties into the online smears that accuse him of being a Muslim, a terrorist, of not saluting the flag, hating the troops, attending a madrassa, hating Israel, and so on.

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[McCCain4retirment]

1. And th GOP wonder why they don't have ethnic voters supporting them