You know, I used to like John McCain and in many ways still do. I didn't agree with him on many issues, but he was always a respectful person who genuinely was a "Maverick" who would say what he thought regardless of his parties opinion. He still was a republican on the vast majority of issues, but he really did work across the aisle.
When Bush pulled his push-polling crap about McCain being a "Manchurian candidate" and "having fathered a black child" back in the 2000 primaries I was shocked and outraged. A man who is a true hero and went through hell I'm reasonably sure I couldn't was being attacked for his service. He was being attacked for adopting an orphan from a third world country. It was despicable and outrageous. Even though I disagreed with him completely I wound up voting for him in the 2000 Texas primary as a "protest vote". It didn't matter since the primary had long been decided and Bush was going to carry Texas regardless, but I wanted to make a point.. that that sort of crap had no place in politics.
McCain had the unfortunate luck to win his parties nomination in a year where the odds were stacked against his party. Bush is the most unpopular president since Nixon or Truman at this point, the American people increasingly think the country is headed in the wrong direction and the economy is in the tank right now. Rightly or wrongly, the incumbent party gets the blame when things are going poorly. The cards were stacked against him and he had next to no chance to win this thing. It looked like he had a real shot at winning when he first picked Sarah Palin as VP, but then she opened her mouth and that went out the window (well that and Tina Fey's impression of her).
Sometimes that is how it is, someone had to be the republican version of McGovern this time and it was you.
What is enraging me iis the thinly veiled race baiting that the McCain campaign has decided to engage in. The head of the Republican party in VA is now openly comparing Barrack Obama to Osama Bin Ladin, the McCain campaign is claiming that Obama "palled around with terrorists", speakers at McCain rallies are constantly using Obama's middle name, and that he has "a different view of America than the rest of us". A preacher at a McCain rally actually prayed that God win the election for John McCain, otherwise people who prayed to "other gods" would think that their god was bigger than the christian God. So I guess God is on McCain's side and the rest of them are with Obama?
Lets cut the BS. Here is the extent of Obama's "palling around with terrorists". 1) Obama met William Ayers as a professor and did not know who he was (which isn't much of a stretch when you realize that Obama was 8 when William Ayers and the weathermen were up to their BS). 2) The served on a board that granted scholarships to college students. This board was made up of several Republicans and the scholarship was funded by a former US ambassador and member of the Reagan administration.
Whether right or wrong, William Ayers is now an accepted member of the Chicago political scene, and a Reganite saw fit to put him on his educational committee along with Obama. Obama has repudiated William Ayers actions as "despicable" and there is absolutely no evidence that he and Obama are close or that Obama shares any of William Ayers ideology.
The real message that the McCain campaign is trying to get across is that Obama is "scary" and "radical" and that he "cannot be trusted". They bring up William Ayers, not because William Ayers was a member of the weathermen. They bring it up because they can use the word "terrorist" in association with Obama.
They are tapping into the sort of xenophobic tendencies that lead people to forward around chain emails that claim Obama is some sort of Muslim Manchurian candidate whose sole purpose is to destroy the United States... and low and behold, people are now shouting "kill him", "traitor", "terrorist" and the like at McCain rallies at the very mention of Obama's name. We have people showing up with signs that say "Obama bin Lyin". Even if these reactions were not wanted or intended, they were provoked.
I think John McCain has lost control of this campaign.
You could see it in his reaction to the woman who declared "Obama is an Arab" at one of his rallies. McCain knows he has taken the low road in a last ditch effort to win the presidency. He is now running a campaign that is unbefitting of the office he seeks.
To me it is very sad to see a man resort to the same tired objectionable attacks that were once used against him. A man who once called Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwel "agents of intolerance" is now stoking those same fears they did.
There is a reason conservative columnists are jumping ship left and right. George Will, David Frum, Michelle Malkin, Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich have all come out against this campaign of lies, slander and race baiting. These are not exactly people who are friendly to the Obama camp.
McCain is most likely going to lose this election, the question is what state is the country left in on Nov. 5th. It's sad.. but hey, at least he still has Pat Buchanan on his side.
