Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[lexi2004]

From: lexi2004 10/11/2008 2:32:23 PM
of 148299

OCTOBER 10, 2008 The Angry Right Some disturbing--and embarrassing--behavior by McCain supporters.By JAMES TARANTO

A front-page story in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle describes "a recent stream of attacks" on Barack Obama:
Then there have been the speakers at McCain-Palin rallies who continue, unchecked by the candidates, to refer to "Barack Hussein Obama"--the emphasis on his middle name is an implication that Obama, who is a Christian, is Muslim. The latest occurred Wednesday in Pennsylvania, when Bill Platt, the Lehigh County Republican chairman, mentioned Obama's former reluctance to wear an American flag lapel pin and said: "Think about how you'll feel on Nov. 5 if you see the news that Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, is president of the United States."
McCain-Palin spokesman Paul Lindsay said, "We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric, which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November."
Regardless, some attending McCain-Palin rallies are responding to this kind of incitement. The Secret Service is investigating press reports that someone might have said "kill him" after Palin tried to connect Obama to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Some attending McCain's rally Wednesday in Pennsylvania interrupted him with shouts of "socialist," "terrorist" and "liar."
Politico's Jonathan Martin reports on the same phenomenon, which he describes as reflecting "the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic." He notes a decided change in tone from the previous two Republican presidential campaigns:
Such contempt for Democrats is, of course, nothing new from conservative activists. But in 2000 and 2004, the Republican rank and file was more apt to ridicule Gore as a stiff fabulist or Kerry as an effete weather vane of a politician.
"Flip-flop, flip-flop," went the cry at Republican rallies four years ago, often with footwear to match the chant.
Now, though, the emotion on display is unadulterated anger rather than mocking.
For years this column has chronicled the follies and outrages of the Angry Left. If we are now seeing the emergence of an Angry Right, that is not a good sign for either the country or those on the conservative and Republican sides of the ideological and partisan divides.
Political hatred is not only wrong, it is counterproductive. As we observed in 2005, "one reason Democrats failed to unseat President Bush was that they were blinded by their hatred for him. This made them overconfident, as they mistook their emotions for facts."
Podcast
James Taranto discusses the Angry Right.
Furthermore, expressions of hatred are unattractive to those who do not share the feeling--a category that presumably includes almost all of the independent and undecided voters who will end up deciding the election. For the Obama campaign and its allies in the media, then, the Angry Right's behavior is an opportunity: a chance to make the other side--including the McCain campaign itself--look like a bunch of scary wackos.
Thus, this afternoon we got an email from good old John Kerry titled "John McCain's ugly campaign":
The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.
According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad--every single one!
Similarly, the San Francisco Chronicle piece we quoted portrays the entire McCain campaign as racist. "Veiled Racism Seen in New Attacks on Obama," the headline declares, adopting the passive-aggressive voice. The argument is weak. It conflates legitimate criticism of Obama with hateful slander, and it doubtless reflects the author's own prejudices. But the behavior of the Angry Right is the best evidence that there is something to those prejudices.
If Barack Obama is elected president, we fear the Angry Right will become angrier and less inhibited, just as the Angry Left did when President Bush and the Republicans were ascendant. It will be an embarrassing time to be a conservative--and Obama, like other presidents who were widely hated by the opposite side (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush), may find himself a favorite for re-election as a result.
Yet there is a danger in all this for a President Obama as well. In retrospect it seems to us that the Angry Left helped drown out intelligent, and potentially constructive, criticism of the Bush administration and its policies. This produced its own sort of overconfidence.
Hurricane Katrina was surely the turning point. The things the left said about the administration's handling of the disaster were absurdly over the top, as this column noted repeatedly at the time. But that did not mean the administration conducted itself well or even adequately--and that is the standard to which the public holds its leaders. In politics, a stupid opposition can be a curse as well as a blessing.
http://online.wsj.com/article/best_of_the_web_today.html#printMode