Why are McCain backers so angry?

From Republicans at political rallies to GOP lawmakers on TV talk shows, McCain-Palin supporters are angry, very angry–and they seem to think their anger justifies whatever they do: from calling Barack Obama a "terrorist" to shouting "kill him" and "off with his head"–to getting huffy when their violent rhetoric is challenged. They're even angrier now after Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, a veteran of the civil rights movement, chastised John McCain and Sarah Palin for whipping Republican crowds up into the kind of fury that can set the stage for murder. Lewis, who marched and bled with Martin Luther King Jr., accused McCain and Palin of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" in a way reminiscent of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who rallied white anger against black civil rights advances in the 1960s. "George Wallace never threw a bomb," Lewis said Saturday. "He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights." While Lewis's warning could have been an opportunity for McCain to reflect on the tone of his campaign, it became another excuse for him to get angry. McCain–who has elicited some of the harsh crowd responses by asking ominously "who is the real Barack Obama?"–denounced Lewis's statement as "a character attack against Governor Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale." Rather than apologize for his own recklessness–or, perhaps, pull a campaign ad that accuses Obama of lying about his association with a "terrorist," former Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers–McCain demanded that Obama repudiate Lewis. (Obama's campaign responded by saying Lewis was right to condemn "hateful rhetoric" at the rallies but distancing itself from the Wallace comparison.) After McCain's angry retort to Lewis, mainstream TV talking heads began wringing their hands that Lewis had gone too far, noting that McCain–and even Palin–had pulled back a bit in the Obama-bashing on Friday, with McCain drawing boos himself when he offered a mild defense of Obama as "a decent family man." But the Republican counterattack against Lewis continued on Sunday as the McCain-Palin camp got riled up for the morning news shows. Among the angry McCain-Palin surrogates was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who went on CBS's "Face the Nation" to deplore Lewis's criticism as "an all-time low" and "an absolute offense to people like me." Graham added, "We're not going to be intimidated by this playing the race card simply because Sen. Obama's record has been attacked in a very fair way." The Real Victim So, the Republican Party, which built its recent political dominance on what Richard Nixon called the "Southern Strategy" and which just held a national convention filled with mocking references to Obama as a "community organizer," is the real victim here. Yet another reason to get angry. Based on the reactions to Lewis's statement, it appears the McCain-Palin campaign takes no responsibility for the latest shout-outs about killing Obama and sees no connection between Palin's incendiary rhetoric that Obama "pals around with terrorists" and the violent anger that is bubbling out of right-wingers at the rallies. The campaign slogan may be "Country First," but the behavior often looks like "Country Be Damned." There seems to be no concern about what would happen to the United States if the angry victimhood of the McCain-Palin crowd, mixed with suggestions that Obama is a closet terrorist, might encourage some nut to take a shot at Obama. Or even if the nation dodges that bullet, what would happen if the McCain-Palin campaign whips up enough racial resentment toward Obama to wrest some tainted victory away on Nov. 4–sure to include some predictable GOP vote tampering and voter intimidation? What kind of bitterly divided nation would they preside over in 2009? As angry as the Republicans are–though they've held the White House for eight years and dominated the Congress from 1995 to 2007–has anyone stopped to think that other Americans might get angry if it is perceived that the Republicans maintained their power through violence, racism or dirty tricks? Do the Republicans expect a repeat of Election 2000–when they overrode Al Gore's victory in the national popular vote, dispatched rioters to Florida to disrupt the Miami recount and then had five Republican justices of the U.S. Supreme Court hand the White House to George W. Bush–while Democrats mostly sat by quietly? Millions of Americans rue the day that Bush was ushered into the White House as they look out over a wasteland of national opportunities squandered. Instead of a vibrant economy, plentiful jobs, a robust stock market, a swelling budget surplus, a nation at relative peace and worldwide admiration–they see an economy in shambles, massive job losses, a stock market in free-fall, record deficits, two open-ended wars and global disdain. If any group has a reason to be angry, it would be the plurality of Americans who voted for Al Gore and saw their collective judgment overturned by a partisan majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Votes Nullified Many of those Americans not only had their vote effectively nullified–and their political judgment ignored–but they have suffered real economic damage. Some are out of work while others are opening statements on their retirement funds this month to find they have lost much of their life savings. Yet, these Americans have been relatively restrained. They aren't going to rallies and shouting death threats about the Republican ticket. Nor are Barack Obama and Joe Biden whipping up crowds with accusations that their opponents are disloyal. No, the anger is disproportionately among the Republicans. McCain and Palin have turned their rallies–starting with the Republican National Convention through joint appearances this past week–into anti-Obama hate-fests, leading to taunts of "terrorist," "socialist," "traitor"–as well as racial epithets, the repeated invocation of his middle name "Hussein," and suggestions on how to eliminate him. The anger appears to be spilling over into events connected to other races. At a Georgia Senate debate on Thursday, Republican partisans in the crowd booed the mention of Obama's name and a woman yelled out, "Bomb Obama," the Associated Press reported. McCain and Palin have stoked these fires with the inflammatory McCarthyistic tactic of exploiting Obama's tangential association with William Ayers, who four decades ago was part of a violent anti-Vietnam War group, the Weather Underground, but who has been living a constructive life since the mid-1970s as a college professor and expert on education policy. Obama crossed paths with Ayers when the two were put on a board for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a program for educational excellence launched by the staunchly Republican (and pro-McCain) Annenberg family. Though Obama's ties to Ayers appear to have been trivial (he also hosted a tea for Obama's first state senate race), McCain and Palin have used what lawyers would call "prejudicial" evidence, playing up minor facts that are intended to inflame a jury. In this case, the prejudicial quality is doubled by the fact that not only was Ayers a minor figure in Obama's early political career but that Ayers's violent behavior occurred a couple of decades earlier. Obama, who was eight at the time and living in Hawaii, has denounced Ayers's involvement in anti-war bombings as "despicable." The Obama-Ayers guilt by association is almost as crazy as suggesting that Obama pals around with violent white racists because when Obama entered the U.S. Senate in 2005 he sought advice from Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan as a young man. McCain's Connections Similarly, one could go back through McCain's connections to radical right-wing groups during the 1980s when he listed himself as a supporter of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, a haven for neo-Nazis, racialists and "death squad" operatives. Or there's Sarah Palin's links to the Alaska Independence Party, a group whose leader has denounced the United States and advocated secession from the Union. Palin has spoken on behalf of the party, where her husband Todd was a member. Indeed, those connections are more relevant than the Ayers's guilt-by-association tag–since they involved direct actions by the principals, not what some other person did in an earlier phase of his life. Nevertheless, the McCain-Palin ticket has seized on Ayers as a central argument against Obama, using highly inflammatory words like "terrorist" and "lie" in a current TV ad. The GOP campaign also has twisted an Obama comment about Afghan War strategy into a slur against American troops. With this pattern, it is hard not to conclude that the McCain-Palin campaign is either willfully feeding red meat to its angry base as a political tactic or hoping to exacerbate doubts among white voters about an African-American candidate for President. In either case, the American people might be more reasonably angry at John McCain and Sarah Palin for resorting to such ugly tactics and putting the nation at grave risk for their personal ambitions. Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.