Opinion: McCain tries to defuse hate fest, speaks well of Obama, gets booed by rally

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McCain has made a point, though. He might be politically opposed to Obama, but he’s not getting down there in the sewer.

The Sydney Morning Herald tells the tale of what happens if you try to prevent Civil War 2.0:

When a visibly angry McCain supporter in Waukesha, Wisconsin, told the candidate on Thursday "I'm really mad" because of "socialists taking over the country", McCain stoked the sentiment. "I think I got the message," he said. "The gentleman is right." He went on to talk about Democrats in control of Congress.

On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

That, for those who are wondering, is the act of a vertebrate, someone who’s not trying to turn the United States against itself.

It might also be a sign that the GOP is trying to rid itself of the image that nutcases are voting for them. The hate festivals have got out of hand, and if there’s anything likely to drive voters away, these invaluable social assets will do it very effectively.

It’s not like they contribute anything but abuse, anyway.

Some commentators say that the rhetoric has been amplified by political speeches:

But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.

"Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as 'dangerous', 'dishonorable' and 'risky' to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate," she said.

All due respect to Ms. Jamieson, but these are relatively mild words. They’re common enough globally, and usually don’t lead to death threats.

I think the misconceptions are pretty obvious. By world standards, the Democrats are about as socialist as Disneyland. It’s laughable, compared to real socialism, to see Obama as some sort of American Lenin.

Only the truly uneducated, (and apparently uninformed, with the “free enterprise” system groveling for support from anywhere because it can’t handle its own mess), could consider any American politician a socialist of any sort. This is disinformation on a cosmic level, spewed out with media assistance, and it’s doing the United States no good.

McCain deserves kudos for trying to get some sanity into this mess.