A Midland man told police that his walking on the sidewalk in full Knights of Ku Klux Klan regalia while toting a handgun had nothing to do with Barack Obama winning the presidency.
Later, however, he admitted that Obama's victory was the catalyst for his display.
Midland police questioned Randy G. Gray II, 30, who was walking on the sidewalk along Eastman near North Saginaw Wednesday afternoon while waving an American flag, but released him because he wasn't breaking any laws.
Gray was walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a vehicle dealership while several motorists shouted obscenities at him and others shouted ''accolades,'' police said.
The Concern Trolls are roaming free in the Village these days: John King, Laura Ingraham, Charles Krauthammer, Tom Brokaw, Karl Rove,Ruth Marcus … I don't know how many talking heads I've heard claim that "America is still a center-right country" in the past few days, but if it were a drinking game, I'd have alcohol poisoning.
I guess I'm confused. I keep hearing from a lot of conservatives that McCain lost because he wasn't conservative enough -- that is, he was essentially a center-right candidate. And I think that's the consensus about where he sat on the political spectrum.
So if America is a "center-right country," then why didn't they elect the center-right candidate?
It's all bullshit, of course. As a CAF/Media Matters study found last year: "Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they're growing more progressive all the time." In fact, as CAF's Robert Borosage points out, "Voters didn't just elect Democrats, they elected progressives." This is a liberal mandate.
Yet it's probably true that the election doesn't necessarily reflect an all-out embrace of all things liberal. Obama largely succeeded by making clear that he has a moderate temperament on a number of issues, and more importantly, in his style of governance. So a certain caution is probably wise.
No, this election was about one thing primarily: a sweeping repudiation of movement conservatism.
The breadth and depth of Democrats' victory was a loud shout from the American public: We have had enough of this crap.
Specifically, we've had enough of two things: conservative governance, and conservative politics.
GOVERNANCE:
The swirling global economic crisis produced by Republican rule is only the most prominent debacle produced by eight years of conservative philosophy being put into action. Conservatives never met a deregulation scheme they didn't like -- and it was that very mania for breaking down well-established institutional barriers, particularly in the financial sector, that led to the housing bubble and the collapse on Wall Street. Certainly, Democrats played along, often eagerly -- but they were being conservative when they did.
No doubt the solutions to the economic crisis will entail re-regulating the financial sector and imposing strict government oversight. And when they do, no doubt conservatives will accuse Democrats of indulging "socialism". But it is to laugh: the right has earned all the credibility of Joe the Plumber on such matters.
Especially when you consider all the other fruits of conservative governance:
Foreign-policy debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A government that invades nations under false pretenses.
A nation less secure and at greater risk of terrorist attacks than ever.
A sinking economy.
An expanding gap between rich and poor.
Utter inaction on global warming.
$5-a-gallon gasoline.
An unresolved immigration problem.
An incapacity to deal with natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
A debacle in public-school education testing and funding.
Declining food and consumer-product safety standards.
A government that spies on its own citizens.
A government that tortures prisoners held in their detention facilities.
These messes weren't the result of George W. Bush being too liberal and straying too far from the movement's party line. To the contrary -- they're the direct result of him toeing that line to the millimeter. They are all the direct product of the conservative philosophy of governance.
POLITICS:
Conservatives have practiced a politics of fear for the past forty years -- since 1968, when Richard Nixon perfected the technique. Since then, as Rick Perlstein has brilliantly limned, we've been living "Nixonland." In recent years, the right has turned politics into a dark art: a relentless parade of smears, demonization, and eliminationism that has profoundly poisoned the public well and deeply divided the country.
In the past decade, we've been subjected to a nonstop battering, cheapening, and demeaning of the nation's public discourse. Nonstop public attacks on liberals -- their policies and their persons -- have come in the form of vicious attack-dog pundits for whom "pushing the envelope" has entailed dredging into the very worst kind of ugly innuendo, and wingnut politicians for whom no smear is too low to stoop to.
Look at what has littered our landscape as a result:
The absurd impeachment of Bill Clinton in spite of the public's broad disapproval.
The caricaturization of a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Al Gore, in the course of foisting a Bush presidency upon an unsuspecting public.
The relentless campaign to portray anyone dissenting from Bush's post-9/11 war plans as insufficiently patriotic and "soft on terrorism."
The tireless recourse to a string of "Friedman units" in excusing the interminable extension of the Iraq war.
The swift-boating of John Kerry.
The Terri Schiavo fiasco.
The Graham Frost fiasco.
The ritual and ongoing demonization of Latinos as criminals, welfare bums, America-hating, job-stealing foreigners.
The crude dog-whistle campaign run against Obama, depicting him as a terrorist-loving, America-hating, secret Muslim brown man.
The deeply disturbing way that conservatives acted on this rhetoric: spewing hate, racism, and threatening violence.
The right threw all of its traditional smears at Obama: Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, the "birth certificate" -- you name it, they flung it at him. And this time around, it didn't take. Poll after poll demonstrated that these attacks actually hurt Republicans across the board.
This happened in dozens of races. The most prominent was Elizabeth's desperate attempt to smear Kaye Fagan with a last-minute round of ads accusing her of palling around with godless types -- and she lost by an even larger margin than polls indicated. It happened at the state and local levels, too; in Washington state, Republican Dino Rossi's relentlessly negative campaign against Democrat Chris Gregoire actually worked against him -- in 2004, he lost by a handful of votes, but in 2008, the margin was a wide one.
In this election, Obama remolded the Democrats into the party of hope -- in particular, the hope for a better America. In the process, we discovered that hope can defeat fear. That is a discovery that could profoundly reshape our national politics for generations.
If Obama's presidency is successful, the "Nixonland" era will finally be over. Voters in 2008, for the first time in memory, clearly repudiated this kind of politics and this kind of governance. But it took a supreme pushback effort to get there. Staying there will be even more work -- this defeat will not mean the right will go away.
Ironically, it will now be in movement conservatives' interest to make sure that an Obama presidency fails (so much for "Country First", eh?). It will be in the interest of everyone else -- liberal, progressive, centrist, even center-rightist -- to make sure that the failure, once again, is theirs.
About two-thirds of Hispanics voted for Obama, decisively surpassing the 53 percent who voted for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, exit polls showed. That year Bush enjoyed a high-water mark of GOP support from Hispanics with 44 percent of the vote from the nation's fastest growing ethnic group.
The Latino Vote Surged in Size: The Latino vote comprised at least 8% of the overall electorate, according to exit polling. This works out to approximately 10.5 million voters, given the expected 130 million votes cast. This figure represents a jump of 3 million voters since 2004, when 7.6 million Latinos cast ballots, and is almost double the Latino turnout of 2000.
The Latino Vote Broke Democratic: In 2004, Democratic candidate John Kerry won the Latino vote 56-44% against George W. Bush. Yesterday, Barack Obama won the Latino vote by a 66-32% margin against John McCain, and even won a majority of Latino support in Florida, a former Latino stronghold for the GOP. Given the increased size of the Latino electorate, this means that 2.9 million more Latino votes went to the Democratic candidate compared to 2004.
Barack Obama Swept the “Latino Battleground” States: Both the Obama and McCain campaigns focused their Spanish-speaking advertising and outreach on four key battleground states – CO, FL, NM, and NV. Within these states, the Latino vote’s rapid growth and break towards Democratic candidates played an important role in Democratic victories.
CO: The Latino vote in CO grew from 8% of the state’s electorate in 2004 to 17% in 2008. Obama gained support of 73% of CO Latinos – key to his 53-46% victory in the state, as well as the Udall Senate victory.
FL: The Latino vote’s shift towards the Democrats was essential in Obama’s win. FL Latinos broke 56-44% for Bush in 2004 and 57-42% for Obama in 2008.
NM: Latinos comprised 41% of the NM 2008 electorate – a jump from their 32% in 2004. Latinos in NM supported Obama 69-30% -- a big jump from 56-44% support for Kerry. NM Latinos’ trend towards Democrats played a huge role in the Presidential race and in handing the open Senate seat and two Congressional races (NM-1 and NM-2) to the Democrats.
NV: Latinos in NV supported Kerry 60-39% in 2004 and Obama 78-20% in 2008. Latinos in NV also increased from 10% of electorate in ’04 to 16% in 2008, and played a key role in handing the NV-3 Congressional seat to the Democrats.
John McCain’s Support Among Latinos Was More Dole than Bush: John McCain’s received just 32% of Latinos’ support nationwide – closer to the Republicans’ low-water mark of 21% support received by Bob Dole in 1996 than the high-water mark of 44% received by George W. Bush in 2004.
Voters Broadly Rejected Anti-Immigrant Candidates and Politics: Voters defeated leading anti-immigrant crusaders such as Marilyn Musgrave (CO-4), Thelma Drake (VA-02), Lou Barletta (running for Rep. Kanjorski’s seat in PA-11), and possibly Virgil Goode (VA-5) (race too close to call at press time), and supported candidates with practical and common sense approaches for fixing our nation’s broken immigration system like Dina Titus (taking Rep. Porter’s seat in NV-3), Bill Foster (IL-14), Jim Himes (taking Rep. Shays’ seat in CT-4), Rep. Giffords (AZ-8), and many others. In the Senate, new pro-reform senators include Mark Warner in VA, Jeanne Shaheen in NH, Mark Udall in CO, Kay Hagan in NC, and Tom Udall in NM.
This all happened, as a few news stories noted, because of the Republican brand -- not just the conservative malfeasance in handling of the economy, but most of all the flaming bigotry that the GOP provided a cozy political home for these past several years.
As we've already noted, the looming prospect of a Barack Obama presidency is driving the racist right over the edge. It's also making them bolder in its recruitment. In Marion, Ohio, this week, Klansmen left recruitment fliers keying off the current election:
The fliers, in the likeness of the old "Uncle Sam wants you for the U.S. Army" posters, depict a hooded Klansman:
Join today and help us win back your rights that have been given to others in the name of political correctness. We are fighting to preserve the existence of our race and a future for our white children.
You may recognize that last line: It's taken directly from the "Fourteen Words" slogan favored by the radical racist right. It was a significant component of the murderous fantasy cooked up by those two skinheads arrested last week for plotting to kill Barack Obama, along with 102 black people.
The Ohio incident raises more importantly the way these folks are becoming bolder in proclaiming themselves and recruiting disenchanted conservatives:
Neither Marion police nor state agents believe the fliers are an intimidation tactic, instead viewing them as recruitment.
The national membership director for the Ku Klux Klan LLC, a chartered organization with its headquarters in Arkansas, said few legitimate KKK chapters have to actually recruit right now.
"This office gets about 100 calls a day, and it's been that way since the start of the election season," said Travis Pierce. "People are looking for answers to what's going on in this country and they are coming to us."
If they're getting their answers from the Klan, that's bad news for everyone.
While the public, political pundits, and even some law enforcement officials have been quick to downplay the actions of Cowart and Schlesselman using words such as “unlikely,” “unsophisticated,” and “bizarre”, these individuals are making a case for who they believe is an American. I can’t help but think back to 2006 when seven men who thought they were working with al-Qaida (but in actuality an FBI informant) were arrested in a plot against Chicago’s Sears Tower.
I know the looming election has sucked all the oxygen out of the newsroom. And it's true that the plot -- they wanted to kill 102 black people, 14 of them by decapitation, before they culminated their spree with a frontal attack on Obama -- more resembled a dumb fantasy out of a bad action flick than anything likely ever to become a reality.
But that's what anyone who might've stumbled onto Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols prior to April 19, 1995, likely would have concluded too. And the fact is, these guys were serious, they were heavily armed, and they took concrete steps to begin making their fantasy into a reality.
No, they almost certainly would never have reached Barack Obama. But would they have been capable of killing large numbers of black people before the law caught up with them. Just like the three men caught in Denver before the Democratic National Convention, they weren't likely at all to succeed but they almost certainly would have killed innocent members of the public along the way.
And unlike the Denver tweakers, these two young men not only appeared much more capable and competent, but also much more motivated. After all, they were entrenched in the skinhead scene and heavily involved in the white-nationalist movement that inspired them.
Initially portrayed in media accounts as “lone wolves” without institutional affiliations, new information about the would-be assassins suggests deeper connections into the subculture of neo-Nazi thugs united by an adulation of Adolf Hitler and desire for vigilante violence. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the would-be assassins, Daniel Cowart, was a “probate member” of an incipient youth group of the neo-Nazi movement, Supreme White Alliance.
Cowart also maintained a friendship with the SWA’s founder, Steven Edwards. Steven Edwards is the son of Ron Edwards, the founder of the Imperial Klans of America, a neo-Nazi outfit best known for the “Nordic Fest” white power concerts it holds at its 15-acre compound in Kentucky.
After the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Cowart’s connection to SWA, the group posted a defensive statement on its website denying his role in organizational activities. “Since [the SWA’s annual election] none of the SWA members have had any contact with accused,” the website declared. “So before you get your story wrong, [SPLC], get the facts.” At the same time, the Supreme White Alliance acknowledged that Cowart was indeed a “probate member.”
The ADL has details about the SWA, including their advocacy of "lone wolf" attacks to inspire a race war:
SWA members echoed such calls elsewhere. One member, Jarod Anderson, declared his determination to "re-light the Fire in the Movement." He added that SWA was his "Crew and Life," and that he would die for it "as much as I would for my Family." Ohio SWA member Richard Kidd claimed, in May 2008 in an Internet posting titled "Its [sic] time for war," that "We will all die one day so lets [sic] die for some thing [sic] not nothing."
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently had a noteworthy examination of how skinheads are trying to mainstream themselves these days as a way of expanding their reach. It included this denunciation of the two Tennessee skinheads' plot:
Steve Smith, director of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre chapter of the KSS, said that it was the type of plan that "makes us look like we're a bunch of loonies."
"They're a couple of loony bins that give our movement a bad name," Smith said. "I don't know anybody who would even think that killing Barack Obama would solve anything.
"Anyone who tries to kill Barack Obama does a lot more harm to the white movement than anything," he said.
The reporter and the public are being bullshitted by Smith here, because their ideology specifically is devoted to inspiring race war. That's what the "14 Words" these two wannabe-killers intended to memorialize by decapitation is all about. These cats are just afraid of the massive pile of law-enforcement bricks that will descend on their heads should such a plot ever succeed.
But the cold reality is that for the white-supremacist faction out there, assassinating Obama is widely viewed as the ticket for inspiring race war. Which means that there are going to be at least a few dozen of these "lone wolves" out there devising a means to attain instant Aryan glory.
James Ridgeway recently observed in an interview with Amy Goodman:
Well, I don’t think you see the groups so much strengthening, but what has happened is that racism in general, racial comments, you know, have come to the surface much more, you know, in greater numbers and more openly, because of the Obama candidacy. And you hear all sorts of racial slurs all over the place. So, this subject, this atmosphere, this kind of racial energy, is very much in evidence. And some of these people undoubtedly are motivated and encouraged by this, you know, that they—it’s hard to know to what extent, but they clearly come forward much more openly than they have in the recent past.
Ward says the increasing anger of white supremacists has manifested itself in Internet postings and threats reported to law-enforcement agencies. What worries the FBI most, he says, are "lone wolves" who might be seething with anger and armed to the teeth but who do not show up on any government radar screens.
Since last February, a presidential-campaign-threat task force created by the FBI and Secret Service has conducted more than 650 "threat assessments" to evaluate reports that could involve threats to presidential or vice presidential contenders or any others connected to the election. About 100 of those threats have been assessed to be "racially motivated" and are thought to be directed at Obama. Another 100 of the reports received since last winter are deemed to be "political" and come from across the ideological spectrum. They include pro-gun groups and anti-abortion extremists. Other categories used by the task force to track threats don't breakdown along ideological or political lines.
Now you have to wonder when the mainstream media -- particularly the news networks -- will notice too. If experience tells us anything, it won't be until after the guns and bombs have gone off.
However, it's not just McCain. The entire Republican Party this year has been revealed as the Party of Racial Fear. Nor is it anything new: Republicans for years have tried to make hay off of racially incendiary cases that turn out to tell us more about the motives and worldviews of the torch-bearing mob than anything they might be chanting.
It's like Susan Smith and Charles Stuart all over again -- a disturbed person blaming a non-existent black man for a crime, fomenting the fear of "the Other" based on our country's inability to acknowledge and deal with race, difference, and stereotypes. That this perpetrator of a hoax was a McCain campaign worker underscores the whole whipped up race frenzy of the McCain mob that we've seen in the last several weeks. It's time to flush this toxic sludge away.
What's equally remarkable, we might add, is the eager role played both by the McCain campaign and by the wingnutosphere -- led by Matt Drudge -- in whipping up a frenzy around this case without considering the potentially incendiary nature of the charges, not to mention the actual credibility of the storytellers.
This is particularly the case with the Matt Margolises out there, furiously clinging to their belief that the story is true, and claiming that the attack heralded the onset of "Nazism 2.0" under Obama: "God help us if Obama wins."
Along with John McCain, their credibility has just sustained a serious body blow. Couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch.
Ari observes that Sarah Palin refused to acknowledge the existence of right-wing domestic terrorists in her NBC interview that aired last night:
Brian Williams: Back to the notion of terrorists and terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers -- hanging out with terrorist – domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don’t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the ‘60’s terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under the definition?
Sarah Palin: There is no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was um one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon -- that is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or um facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable -- I don’t know if you could use the word terrorist, but its unacceptable and it would not be condoned of course on our watch. I don’t know if what you are asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.
Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers? Protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails, were thrown? People died.
Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.
Well, just in case Mrs. Palin forgot, there was a running spate of domestic terrorism in the United States in the 1990s created by the far-right "Patriot" movement, much of it revolving around abortion and hatred of the federal government.
The signature event, of course, was the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. But that was hardly the end of it. Indeed, by the end of 1999, we were able to document over 40 such cases -- many of which were nipped in the bud before they reached fruition. Some were not.
It seems Palin needs a refresher course. The Jed Report video above mentions two abortion-clinic shooters, Paul Hill and Michael Griffin, who were among the murderous terrorists who inspired the federal law that protects abortion providers -- a law John McCain twice voted against.
But that was hardly all. Below, a rundown of other significant domestic terrorists:
Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American radical described by the FBI as a terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States which killed two people and injured at least 150 others.
Rudolph declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion and what he describes as "the homosexual agenda." He spent years as the FBI's most wanted criminal fugitive, but was eventually caught. In 2005 Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and the death penalty. Rudolph was connected with the white supremacist Christian Identity movement. Although he has denied that his crimes were religiously or racially motivated, Rudolph has also called himself a Roman Catholic in "the war to end this holocaust" (of abortion).
James Charles Kopp (born August 2, 1954) is an American citizen who was convicted in 2003 for the 1998 sniper-style murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst, New York physician who performed abortions. Prior to his capture, Kopp was on the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. On June 7, 1999 he had become the 455th fugitive placed on the list by the FBI. He was affiliated with anti-abortion group "The Lambs of Christ." He has been referred to as a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.
Letters left at the scene of an April 1996 bank robbery/clinic bombing in Spokane, Washington, contained Identity propaganda, diatribes against the banking system and were signed with the symbol of the "Phineas Priesthood." [At the time of the robbery, a bomb was set off at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic as a diversion, with death threats toward abortion providers contained in the note left with that bomb.] The three men arrested, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell, were linked to white supremacist and "Identity" groups and were also charged with setting off bombs at a newspaper office and a Planned Parenthood clinic. All three were convicted.
Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and security guard who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege, as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. The bombing killed 168 people, and was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Buford O'Neal Furrow, Jr. (born November 25, 1961) perpetrated the August 1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting on August 10, 1999, when he attacked a day care center at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. The shooting injured three children, and a receptionist. He also shot dead US Postal Service carrier Joseph Ileto who was Filipino American. Furrow was a member of the white-supremacist group Aryan Nations in 1995.
On January 24, 2001 Furrow pleaded guilty all of the counts against him. In exchange for pleading guilty, Furrow avoided a possible death sentence, but was instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to the indictment, Furrow expressed no regrets for any of his crimes.
This is just a sampling. There were many more such cases in which clinics were bombed, government officials and offices threatened or attacked.
These activities slowed considerably in the past eight years, but continue to bubble along. There was, for instance, the case of Demetrius "Van" Crocker, who was caught trying to buy explosives he planned to bomb Congress with. Or William Krar, who put together a cyanide bomb he planned to set off in a public venue. Or Chad Castagana, the self-described Coulter/Malkin worshipper who sent various liberal figures fake anthrax threats. There have been many others.
And they haven't gone away. As recently as last year, bombs were being left at an abortion clinic in Houston, and Alabama militiamen were being arrested for plotting to commit a massacre of Latino immigrants.
But we understand why Sarah Palin may not want to acknowledge the existence of this kind of domestic terrorist.
After all, every one of them proceeded out of the ranks of the far-right "Patriot" movement. The very movement whose members she "palled around with" in Wasilla -- and indeed empowered them at every turn.
Sometimes you have to wonder what Republicans have against democracy.
Because that's what this whole "voter fraud" foofara is about. John McCain and Sarah Palin and Lou Dobbs and the rest of the right-wing torch brigade that have been after ACORN and the Ohio Secretary of State aren't concerned about protecting people's right to vote -- and in fact, their efforts largely go toward directly stripping citizens of their legitimate voting rights.
Or more precisely, this is all about building a post-election narrative aimed at delegitimizing a Barack Obama presidency by claiming he won fraudulently. It's not just a handy excuse for the ass-kicking they deserve -- it's a whole right-wing conspiracy-theory cottage industry in the making that will nurture their paranoia and rage for years down the road.
This weekend, Sarah Palin was out whipping up a fine froth among the McCainiacs about ACORN's activities:
Palin demanded answers to “unanswered questions about his connections with ACORN.”
The fans screamed “Booo!” at least 10 times when Palin mentioned Obama’s name.
“ACORN is under investigation for rampant voter fraud in 13 states. ACORN received over $800,000 from the Obama campaign,” Palin said. All 13 are swing states like Indiana.
“Booo!” Palin’s supporters shouted. Obama has said the $800,000 was for voter canvassing during the primary election, not for voter registration during the general election.
Palin, of course, is just following her the lead of her boss, who claimed in Wednesday's debate that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." And we're already seeing the violent results on the ground emanating from this kind of demagoguery.
And it's demagoguery on a massive scale. After all, everywhere that ACORN has been seriously examined -- from Indiana to Seattle, whenever issues have arisen they have been the result of individual canvassers trying to cheat ACORN, not with the organization itself.
And let's be clear: there is no evidence whatsoever that an actual voting fraud problem exists. Just in regards to ACORN, the bogus registrations have largely been flagged and caught. Moreover, there simply is no evidence that people actually register to vote illegally on anything more than an infinitesimal scale.
Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center's report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.
"It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls," the report said.
Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, calls the current controversy "chapter 22 in a drama that's been going on awhile. The pattern is that nothing much ever comes from this. There have been no known cases of people voting fraudulently."
"What we've seen," Keyssar said, "is sloppiness and someone's idea of a stupid joke, like registering as Donald Duck."
No, what's been happening instead is that Republican-sponsored "voter purges" have been stripping people of their legitimate voting rights. They show up expecting to vote on Election Day and are turned away, and nothing is rectified for months, if ever.
Purges rely on error-ridden lists. States regularly attempt to purge voter lists of ineligible voters or duplicate registration records, but the lists that states use as the basis for purging are often riddled with errors. ... Voters who are eligible to vote are wrongly stricken from the rolls because of problems with underlying source lists.
A classic case of this was in the wake of the 2004 election in Washington's King County. The GOP attempted to challenge the registration of several hundred Seattle voters -- and quickly found that its lists had been drawn up based on bogus information. Later, it was discovered that the GOP had illegally modified its voter-challenge forms.
The Brennan Center study also found that voters are purged secretly and given no notice; and that the purges are frequently subject to crude manipulation.
I don't know about you, but I happen to be one of those people who considers the right to vote the cornerstone of republican democracy: the political enfranchisement of the citizen is embodied in it. Indeed, it's a sacred right in a democratic society, one that should be revoked only under the most careful of circumstances.
Now, it is problematic that the few people who do vote fraudulently dilute the legitimate votes of the rest. But considering how infrequently it actually happens, the frenzy into which the right regularly whips itself over supposed "voter fraud" is beyond any proportion to the actual problem.
If you accept the primacy of the right of citizens to vote, then these attempts at preventing ineligible votes have to be as close to perfect as possible; an error rate of even more than 1 percent is too great. Because anything more than that means you're violating the inviolable -- taking away the most fundamental political right of the American system.
What's more telling, perhaps, is the Republican predilection for deriding and undermining citizens' legitimate voting rights. After all, no less an authority than Antonin Scalia himself declared, in the Bush v. Gore travesty, that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States."
No, it should be obvious to any adult observer of the Republican melodrama that they're not serious about protecting people's voting rights. Rather precisely the opposite: Blocking the registration and participation of larger numbers of voters (particularly Democratic-leaning voters) has been a cornerstone of GOP strategy since at least Florida in 2000, if not before (their antipathy to the Motor Voter Law extended back to the early 1990s). It played a significant role in Ohio in 2004 as well. And it was the very engine that fueled the entire U.S. Attorneys firing scandal that brought down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
In other words, if you're a Democratic voter, or simply from a demographic group that leans Democratic, Republicans are hoping to prevent you from voting at all.
The best part of this scam is that they get to play as though they are the folks protecting your vote -- when in fact they're doing their best to take it away. And when it's all over, they get to use it to fraudulently beat Democrats over the head with it while getting the torch-bearers' flames stoked up all nice and hot.
So why do Republicans hate democracy? Maybe because they are the party of Oligarchical White Privilege. And democracy is about to kick them in the ass.
Ever notice how the wingnuts start a-flapping whenever someone remotely suggests that some far-right nutcase or other ought not to be speaking on the public dime (see particularly Ann Coulter), or when a right-wing hack winds up getting his show cancelled because he hacked up a ratings hairball? Censorship! they cry.
But when it comes to left-wing figures, especially the targets of their fury, well, such scruples vanish like the little bubbles they always were.
So yesterday the University of Nebraska gave in to the wingnutosphere's onslaught against cause celebre William Ayers, who was scheduled to speak there next month.
Mind you, they did so not because they agreed with the claim that Ayers shouldn't speak, but because the frothing has reached the point that officials feared for the safety of Ayers as well as the attending public:
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln rescinded its speaking invitation tonight for 1960s radical-turned-educator William Ayers.
University officials cited "safety reasons" for canceling Ayers' Nov. 15 appearance.
Spokeswoman Kelly Bartling declined to elaborate on what safety concerns would keep Ayers from addressing a College of Education and Human Sciences event.
Earlier today, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman strongly condemned the invitation and called on the NU Board of Regents and President J.B. Milliken to block it.
University officials said in a news release Friday evening that “the university’s threat assessment group monitored e-mails and other information UNL received regarding Ayers’ scheduled Nov. 15 visit and identified safety concerns which resulted in the university canceling the event.”
Of course, leading the torchlight brigade to block Ayers' appearance was our old friend Michelle Malkin, who earlier this week descended even farther into self-parody by complaining that poor Joe the Self-Promoter's Plumber's ordinary rights as a citizen were being trampled upon by the "deranged" liberal bloggers and reporters who decided to look into his background.
So what does she have to say about the reasons for the Ayers cancellation?
“Safety concerns.”
Whose safety?
Gee, I wonder.
Waiting for someone to scream “RAAAAACIST” or something.
How about "fascist"? That oughta work. Not to mention fit.
It was kind of strange, dintcha think, that John McCain came to the defense of his supporters last night after Barack Obama pointed out that people at McCain/Palin rallies were shouting out "terrorist" and "kill him!" in reference to Obama.
Now an Al Jazeera camera crew caught the honest sentiments of McCain/Palin supporters at an Ohio rally:
“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”
“When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”
“He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”
“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”
“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”
“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”
“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”
“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”
“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”
Yep, McCain must be so proud.
The rest of us, well ... let's just say those polls should tell the story.
But Sanchez and the CNN crew instead ran their report off into the underbrush, reaching a low when the anchor tried to draw a parallel between the Alaska party and the forces behind the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
"Not comparing them to actions [sic] but comparing them in terms of ideology, not actions but ideology, are [members of the Alaskan Independence Party] similar to the group that blew up the [Alfred P.] Murrah building?" Sanchez asked, seemingly apologetic for that stinker, even as he unleashed it.
Even Neiwert, whose reporting makes him no Palin fan, seemed a bit taken aback by that line. "Well, of course, that was an individual lone wolf who was associated with the patriots" movement, Neiwert said of the Oklahoma City attack. "But, yes, they basically come from the same, uh, sort of ideological background. That's correct."
I still had trouble seeing what that had to do with Sarah Palin.
Well, it's true that I was a bit taken aback by the question. For one, hardly anyone in the mainstream media seems to remember the Oklahoma City bombing and the Patriot movement's involvement in it. For the most part, the mainstream line has evolved that this was an "isolated incident" involving a lone kook, rather than the signature event of a broad stream of right-wing domestic terrorism that hit the United States in the 1990s. So I was a little surprised to hear someone make the connection.
But it is a connection that involves some thoughtful nuance, so I was careful in answering him. The reality is that the 1990s "Patriot" movement was essentially the latest step in the racist right's ongoing efforts to return to the mainstream of American discourse -- and in mainstreaming themselves in the guise of "citizen militias" and the like, this meant a couple of things: First, that its rhetoric and appeals were largely stripped of its overtly racist and anti-Semitic elements, yet its political agenda was nonetheless as radical as before.
And second, it meant that a lot of mainstream conservatives were going to be brushing shoulders with real far-right radicals and, in many cases, being gulled into joining arms with them. Part of covering and writing about the Patriot movement involved listening and watching carefully to distinguish them, because to some extent, you had to give the mainstream conservatives the benefit of the doubt when it came to their actual intent in getting involved with these groups.
At the same time, they still had some real culpability insofar as they helped swell the ranks of the militias and other Patriot organizing strategies, as well as helped lend them a veneer of fake legitimacy and normalcy. Moreover, in many cases -- particularly with Republican politicians (the late Rep. Helen Chenoweth springs to mind) -- those who gave the militias cover of legitimacy, pandered to them, and actually empowered them should face serious questions from the mainstream electorate for their conduct in public office and their lack of judgment.
And that, for those who need ask, is what Sarah Palin has to do with all this.
For those who haven't read the Salon story, our findings about Sarah Palin's relationship to the Patriot right in Wasilla, and Alaska generally, boiled down to this:
Palin formed a political alliance with Wasilla's Patriot-movement faction while still a Wasilla city councilman, and they played a significant role in her successful campaign against the three-term incumbent mayor in 1996.
Palin, in one of her first acts as mayor, attempted to fill the seat vacated by her ascension to the mayorship with one of the leaders of this faction -- a bellicose man described by the city councilman who blocked his appointment as having a "violent" disposition.
Mayor Palin also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this faction.
Palin also organized this faction to turn out at a city council meeting to shout down a proposed local gun-control ordinance. Palin also determinedly allowed the testimony of the pro-gun crowd before the bill had even been presented to the council or prepared for public hearings -- a clear violation of city-council policy.
Palin had a continual association with Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson (a Wasilla resident) throughout her tenure as mayor, and joined to support him in a series of anti-gun-control and anti-tax measures, both locally and statewide.
Palin attended the AIP's state conventions in 1994 and 2006, the latter when she was campaigning for the governorship. The 1994 appearance is more questionable, since it came at time when the AIP was more openly radical (its members had backed militia figure Col. James "Bo" Gritz in the 1992 election), and its platform then contained what Chryson calls "racist language".
She sent a videotaped address to the AIP at its 2008 convention (see above), ostensibly because "I've always thought competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well" -- though notably, she sent no such similar videotaped welcome to the state's Democratic Party.
In fact, it should be clear to anyone who understands how politics work, especially in rural places like Alaska, that Palin's videotaped message to the AIP was a clear acknowledgment that they constitute a significant part of her base.
And that's really the problem. By itself, it might be benign. But given the history of associations with this faction we dug up in Wasilla, it takes on a much more troubling cast.
The McCain/Palin campaign, as we noted, wants to dismiss this as a "smear" with taking the trouble to demonstrate that it is one. And it's true that the on-air response to this was somewhat lacking. Writes Rainey:
"CNN is furthering a smear with this report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning Sen. Obama's religion," said Michael Goldfarb, a McCain-Palin spokesman. "No serious news organization has tried to make this connection, and it is unfortunate that CNN would be the first."
Responding to the reference to Obama's religion toward the end of the segment, Sanchez either ignored or was too dull to understand that the McCain camp was complaining about unfairness. Instead, he turned to the Salon reporter and asked: "Is this in any way a religious organization, the AIP?"
Huh?
I should have made clear at this point that the issue isn't one of Sarah Palin's faith, it's about her conduct in public office, and how it is affected by her ideological associations. Because that is the issue here.
And it's troubling that a mainstream political reporter like Rainey can't see that. This is underscored by his conclusion:
The regrettable episode ended with Neiwert suggesting that the secessionists have talked about "infiltrating" mainstream political parties to spread their influence.
"Infiltrating," repeated the malleable Sanchez. "Interesting choice of words."
Interesting indeed.
Well, what Rainey might find interesting is the video at left. It is footage of Dexter Clark, the AIP's vice-chairman, leading discussion of political tactics at the 2007 North American Secessionist Convention. In it, he discussed Sarah Palin thus:
She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along -- she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won't go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.
Now, it's true that Clark later disavowed this as "mistaken" after examining the AIP's actual rolls in 2008. But it's clear that Clark and many others within the AIP viewed Palin as "one of ours." And as we have demonstrated, they did so with good cause.
Clark then goes on to bring up Ron Paul as a good example of how to "infiltrate" other parties:
I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that. He's a dyed-in-the wool libertarian -- I know because he came to Alaska and spoke as a libertarian -- and he's put the Republican label on to get elected. That's all there is to it. And any one of your organizations -- should be using that same tactic. You should infiltrate -- I know that Christian Exodus is in favor of it. The Free State Movement is in favor of it. I don't even care which party it is. Whichever party you think in that area you can get something done, get into that party. Even though that party has its problems, right now that is the only avenue. And if you get some people on city council or a county board you can have some effect.
Not only did Palin conduct her office in just such a fashion -- trying to appoint Patriot-movement followers to vacant city-council seats -- it's clear that Clark, Chryson, and many others within the AIP continue to view Palin as "one of theirs." This is no doubt why they urged their members to support her in 2006. However, their belief that she is "infiltrating" the Republican Party is more likely than not simply part of their long-running delusional belief system.
What's not delusional, however, is the cold reality that Palin has a real history of empowering these extremists, and pandering to their conspiratorial beliefs, from her position of public office. And the question is whether that would continue from a position of real power in the White House.
(You can send your thoughts -- respectfully, please -- to Rainey at james.rainey@latimes.com)
Well, now we know what it takes to get a response to legitimate questions about their candidate out of the McCain/Palin campaign: Appear on CNN.
I did so today, on Rick Sanchez's CNN Newsroom program, where we discussed the Salon piece Max Blumenthal and I co-wrote and its ramifications. Sanchez was particularly focused on Palin's connections to the Alaskan Independence Party, so that was the bulk of our discussion. (I'll update with the transcript when it's available.) [Update: Here is the transcript.]
Now, when we were preparing the Salon piece for publication, I contacted the McCain/Palin campaign first by phone to ask for their reactions to our report's findings. They asked me to send an e-mail, which I did. But I never heard a word back from them.
So today, after CNN picked up the story, they were in fact able to elicit the following response:
CNN is furthering a smear with this report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning Senator Obama's religion. No serious news organization has tried to make this connection, and it is unfortunate that CNN would be the first.
We are trying to arrange to have one of the Governor's people come on air to respond in the event you do run this piece.
A few points about this:
-- A smear by definition is untrue. However, everything in our story is fully documented. We've even posted the relevant documents here so readers can judge the accuracy of the story for themselves.
-- This is not about Sarah Palin's faith; it's about her conduct as a public official.
-- In fact, CNN is not the first network to pick up on this story. Rachel Maddow at MSNBC in fact featured Blumenthal on her Thursday night broadcast, when the story first broke, to talk about it.
If Team McCain wants to convince anyone this is merely a "smear", they're going to have to demonstrate some falsity or distortion first.
What we've already heard from some Palin defenders is that this report is merely another attempt at "guilt by association."
But "guilt by association," by definition, involves an entirely irrelevant association (which describes the William Ayers "connection" to a T). Palin's associations with the "Patriot" right, however, are entirely relevant, because they reflect directly on her conduct as a public official and her judgment. They also, I should add, reflect on a deeper level the kind of right-wing populism she's been indulging in recent weeks.
I wanted to offer a little deeper detail on the report in Salon that Max Blumenthal and I put together on Sarah Palin's radical-right friends in Wasilla and the extent to which they worked together -- partly because some of the details reveal a good deal about Palin's approach to governance.
As the story explains, when Palin was elected mayor in 1996, one of her first acts was to attempt to fill her former city council seat by appointing one of the leaders of the town's Bircherite faction, Steve Stoll. She was blocked in that effort by a single vote from former councilman Nick Carney.
Here's a PDF of the minutes from that meeting. What's particularly noteworthy is that Palin was on the verge of ramming the appointment through over Carney's head.
The situation was this: Wasilla's city council comprises six seats. Two of those had been vacated by the just-finished election -- Palin into the mayorship, and another councilman who'd been elected to the Mat-Su Borough Council. The city charter requires all votes to be a majority (that is, 4-2, 4-1, 5-1, 5-0, or 6-0) in order for a measure to pass, including council-seat appointments. Since there was no quorum of the council available, any of these seats had to be approved 4-0 by those council members remaining.
So when Carney refused to put Stoll on the council, it made the vote 3-1. The council minutes tell us that the situation lingered for a week, for a follow-up meeting on Oct. 21, and when they came back, Palin announced that she had some legal opinions saying she could proceed despite Carney's opposition:
Mayor Palin following consultation with several attorneys suggested that since there appeared to be an impasse, that Steve Stoll and Mrs. Dianne Keller be appointed to the vacant council seats based on a 3 to 1 vote previously made by the council.
Evidently, much wrangling then ensued, during which Palin ultimately backed down and nominated a compromise candidate, Darlene Langill, who was appointed to the seat.
It's also worth noting that, according to Carney, Palin also was hoping to appoint one of Stoll's right-wing cohorts, a man named Mike Chryst, to the second council seat. But the city clerk ruled him ineligible because he lived outside the city limits.
The other Wasilla City Council meeting of special note that we describe in the story involved Carney's attempt to pass a common-sense local gun-control ordinance (which you can read as a PDF here. It was this meeting to which Palin recruited a number of witnesses, led by Mark Chryson, to protest the proposal even before it had been completed, and certainly before any hearings were planned.
Councilwoman Langill requested clarification whether or not the public hearing on Ordinance Serial No. 97-43 was being conducted at this time, as Council Policy was not being followed since people were being allowed to speak on a scheduled agenda item under persons to be heard. Mayor Palin stated that she invites the public to speak on any issue, at any time. Councilman Carney stated that he thought it was unfortunate that Mayor Palin was allowing discussion on Ordinance Serial No. 97-43 at this time. He stated that his intention in presenting this ordinance was to make Wasilla the safest community possible. He feels there are areas of Wasilla where offensive weapons should not be allowed. He never expected to get a second on the introduction of this ordinance, and since there is no support from the Council on the proposed ordinance, allowing discussion is a waste of time. He stated Mayor Palin is violating the meeting rules set for this Council.
Later on, when Carney did try to get a second to advance the ordinance for the next council meeting, he couldn't get one. And so it died then (though Carney did later introduce a resolution banning weapons from city offices, but that too went nowhere).
The picture of Palin's style of governance is eerily similar to what we've seen from the Bush White House the past eight years: When laws, rules, and policies stand in the way of getting what you want, simply ignore them away.
Moreover, what we also see is Palin's early willingness to use demagoguery and overt appeals to the paranoid, angry fringe of the right to get what she wants.
Pretty much what we're seeing on the campaign trail these days, don't you think?
Republicans have proven they will never retreat under pressure from terrorists or the nations who harbor them.
While Democrats have called for surrender in the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, they have also pledged to meet unconditionally with dictators and tyrants.
Keep America Safe. Vote Republican.
And Eli observes at Multi Medium that the McCain campaign is in fact training its volunteers to think of, and to portray, Obama as a terrorist, "a ground operation actually training its volunteers to elicit violent responses in voters."
You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, "How are you feeling about the economy?"
And I'll bet you, you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market. Did we just take a major hit with those investments?
Fear about, how are we going to afford to send our kids to college? A fear, as small-business owners, perhaps, how we're going to borrow any money to increase inventory or hire more people.
Fear, fear everywhere. That's what Republicans are selling.
And in reality, this is now the standard Republican campaign: Create fear among voters, and then play on those fears. It has been so for as long as I've been in politics.
I've been rereading Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, which explores in colorful detail how masterful The Trickster was in conducting precisely just such a divisive, culture-war campaign. In his day, it was all about appealing to white voters fearful about Negro rioters and depraved hippies and conspiring commies. The precise objects of fear have altered slightly -- now it's simply black "criminals" and dirty-hippie liberals and bloodthirsty terrorists -- but the basic outline is the same.
Of course, as you can see from the billboard above -- which appeared at a Pittsburgh suburb in 1949 -- this sort of appeal even preceded Nixon.
But this year, their fearmongering is reaching new depths. As Adam Serwer at TAP recently explored, the talk about Obama as a terrorist has its roots in this ancient sewer, and more important, it has dangerous consequences. Serwer was describing the weekend dustup over the remarks by Rep. John Lewis, the civil-rights pioneer, comparing McCain to George Wallace. As Serwer observes:
Lewis was expressing concern that the McCain campaign’s rhetoric could lead some of their supporters to conclude that violence is the only rational response to an Obama victory.
And as an Obama victory begins to appear even more inevitable, watch for the Little Timmys to start coming out of the woodwork.
Max Blumenthal and I recently spent several days on separate visits to Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin's hometown where she was mayor from 1996 to 2002. We talked to a number of local residents and pored over a number of city documents, looking into Palin's associations with a far-right political faction in Wasilla. (We working thanks to a grant from The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund.)
The report is now complete and can be read in its entirety at Salon.com. You can also see above the video Max made of his interview with one of the faction's main leaders, a man named Mark Chryson, who headed up the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party during the same time period. It pretty much speaks for itself.
Essentially here’s what we found:
That Gov. Palin, when a Wasilla city council member, formed an alliance with some of the more radical far-right citizens in Wasilla and vicinity, particularly members of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party who were allied with local John Birch Society activists. These activists played an important role in her election as Wasilla mayor in 1996.
Once mayor, one of Mrs. Palin’s first acts was to attempt to appoint one of these extremists (a man named Steve Stoll) to her own seat on the city council. This was a man with a history of disrupting city council meetings with intimidating behavior. She was blocked by a single city council member.
Afterward, Mrs. Palin fired the city’s museum director at the behest of this faction.
She fomented an ultimately successful effort to derail a piece of local gun-control legislation which would simply have prohibited the open carry of firearms into schools, liquor stores, libraries, courthouses and the like. The people recruited to shout this ordinance down included these same figures, notably the local AIP representative (who became the AIP’s chairman that same year).
She remained associated politically with the local AIP/Birch faction throughout her tenure as mayor on other issues, particularly a successful effort to amend the Alaska Constitution to prohibit local governments from issuing any local gun-control ordinances.
In general, we found that not only did Mrs. Palin have numerous associations with these extremists, she actively sought to empower them locally and to enact their agendas both locally and on a state level.
We sent an e-mail to the McCain/Palin campaign asking for their reaction to these findings, and have so far received no response. If and when we do, we'll update.
We haven't any insight into Palin's accusations that Barack Obama "palled around with terrorists" by associating with William Ayers. But we do know there are serious questions about her own dalliances with the far right during the same time period. We didn't find any evidence that Palin herself subscribed to their "New World Order" conspiracy theories, but it's clear she was comfortable with not only aligning herself with them politically, but putting them in positions of actual political power and influence.
I'll be back tomorrow with some City of Wasilla documents you can peruse on your own substantiating our findings.
UPDATE: Max Blumenthal appeared on Rachel Maddow to discuss this article. Video shortly.
[Cross-posted at Crooks & Liars -- where, as you may note, I'll be the managing editor as of Monday. More on that in a bit.]
It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.
"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.
"Boooo!" said the crowd.
"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.
"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
Hard to say whether the "him" was Ayers or Obama, but the difference is only one of degree.
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
If John McCain and Co. really think that this is going to help them get elected, we have a very ugly October ahead. Helmets, everyone.
So Sarah Palin wants to call out Barack Obama for supposedly playing footsie with a former Weather Underground leader named William Ayers. OK, fair enough -- other than the fact that nothing Obama did either empowered or enabled Ayers in his extremism.
Notably, she nominated one of her local militiamen/John Birch Society types in Wasilla to serve on the city's planning board. This is a big deal to "Patriot" folks, who consider local planning and zoning ordinances to be among the chief signs of creeping socialism, and fight them tooth and nail. Had the Wasilla Council not balked at her nomination, the man no doubt would have wreaked havoc with the city's planning laws and their enforcement.
She also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this character.
And then there were Palin's notable and extended dalliances with the radical secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. In 1992, its members largely supported former militiaman James "Bo" Gritz for president. It has over the years been associated with promoting paranoid "New World Order" conspiracy theories.
And just this year, Palin sent a video address to the AIP at its convention, telling them to "keep up the good work," even though she is ostensibly a Republican. Why do that?
Well, in the video, she tells the AIP that “Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics ... I’ve always thought competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well.
Notably, however, she did not record a similar message for the state’s Democrats at their convention.
That glass house she's standing in is not the ideal site for throwing rocks at Barack Obama.
IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?
But Palin's response was downright chilling:
PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.
In other words, she announced that she not only intends to keep all those expanded powers that Dick Cheney extraconstitutionally granted himself, she intends to find ways to expand them further.
I'm sure it will all be done in the interests of the American people, though.
One important factor that emerged from last night's vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden was the way Palin clearly cast herself -- and by inference, the McCain/Palin ticket -- as essentially populist in their appeal. But it's specifically a right-wing kind of populism.
This wasn't terribly surprising to me. I spent the earlier part of this week in the Wasilla area, and I frequently heard from people on all sides of Alaska's various political aisles that Palin, above all, is in fact a populist. I heard this from a former Republican legislator I met at a roadside stop and from a progressive Alaskan activist -- as well as from various locals I met about town. Even among the less articulate bar patrons, the refrain was consistent: "She's for the people, that's what she's about."
At the same time, it was indisputable that she has always practiced a specifically right-wing kind of populism: socially and fiscally conservative, business-friendly, and hostile to progressive causes.
Now, one of the many conceits of Jonah Goldberg's incoherent screed, Liberal Fascism, was that populism by nature was an inherently a left-wing phenomenon. As I explained at the time, populism in fact historically has seen both left- and right-wing permutations in America. Some of the more notable cases of right-wing populism range from Bacon's Rebellion to the Ku Klux Klan to the modern-day Posse Comitatus and militia/Patriot movements.
Not that Palin's populism is necessarily swimming in those same cesspools, but it is clearly the same kind of creature. It's still in the early phases of its popularity, so it's hard to tell what kind of shape it will mature into; but given the traditional, ah, flexibility with which right-wing populists apply the term "the people" (especially when it comes to economic classes), just about anything is possible.
Here, from last night's debate, are her various attempts to cast herself and McCain as essentially populist (the main giveaway being her references to "the people"):
Now, Barack Obama, of course, he's pretty much only voted along his party lines. In fact, 96 percent of his votes have been solely along party line, not having that proof for the American people to know that his commitment, too, is, you know, put the partisanship, put the special interests aside, and get down to getting business done for the people of America.
We're tired of the old politics as usual. And that's why, with all due respect, I do respect your years in the U.S. Senate, but I think Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that's going to come with reform.
... One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let's do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don't live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we're taking personal responsibility through all of this. It's not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.
... Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction, 94 times.
... I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.
... And that's why Tillerson at Exxon and Mulva at ConocoPhillips, bless their hearts, they're doing what they need to do, as corporate CEOs, but they're not my biggest fans, because what I had to do up there in Alaska was to break up a monopoly up there and say, you know, the people are going to come first and we're going to make sure that we have value given to the people of Alaska with those resources.
... So there hasn't been a whole lot that I've promised, except to do what is right for the American people, put government back on the side of the American people, stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street.
... Positive change is coming, though. Reform of government is coming. We'll learn from the past mistakes in this administration and other administrations.
And we're going to forge ahead with putting government back on the side of the people and making sure that our country comes first, putting obsessive partisanship aside.
... What I would do also, if that were to ever happen, though, is to continue the good work he is so committed to of putting government back on the side of the people and get rid of the greed and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington.
I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, D.C.
So that people there can understand how the average working class family is viewing bureaucracy in the federal government and Congress and inaction of Congress.
Just everyday working class Americans saying, you know, government, just get out of my way. If you're going to do any harm and mandate more things on me and take more of my money and income tax and business taxes, you're going to have a choice in just a few weeks here on either supporting a ticket that wants to create jobs and bolster our economy and win the war or you're going to be supporting a ticket that wants to increase taxes, which ultimately kills jobs, and is going to hurt our economy.
... People aren't looking for more of the same. They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years.
He's taken shots left and right from the other party and from within his own party, because he's had to take on his own party when the time was right, when he recognized it was time to put partisanship aside and just do what was right for the American people.
Of course, Barack Obama's campaign indulges a certain amount of left-wing populism as well, but it's largely framed within a traditionalist context. However, the clear reshaping of the Republican Party under the McCain/Palin ticket as essentially a right-wing populist entity is well worth noting.
And if I had to guess -- especially judging by the way right-wingers are swooning over her winking at them -- Sarah Palin's career as a populist is just getting started, even if she and McCain lose in November. Considering that one of the chief reasons right-wing populism in America has not succeeded in recent decades is that it has lacked a charismatic figurehead, well, she certainly bears close watching.
