McCain Enflames "Partisan Rancor"

This fall's campaign may go down as one of the nastiest in American history.

Dateline: Tuesday, October 28, 2008

By Robert Parry

Perhaps the biggest lie of John McCain's campaign — from a list that is long and growing daily — was his claim during his acceptance speech in early September that he would be the leader who would end "partisan rancor".

The statement already sounded odd coming after the McCain campaign had spent weeks mocking Barack Obama as a celebrity on par with Paris Hilton and after a Republican convention filled with ridicule of Obama as a "community organizer".

But what wasn't known then was that McCain's end-partisan-rancor pledge would precede a fall campaign that may go down as one of the nastiest in American history.

Also, what's been remarkable is that some of the ugliest smears are coming personally from McCain, Sarah Palin and other Republican officeholders, not from arms-length 527 groups or anonymous political operatives.

In the past, too, it was enough for Republicans to accuse Democrats of being "liberal" or "soft on terror". Now, Palin depicts Obama as "palling around with terrorists", while McCain has brushed past the "liberal" label to tar Obama with the charge of "socialism".

Some McCain/Palin rallies have turned into Obama hate-fests, with McCain's rhetorical question — "Who is the real Barack Obama?" — prompting shouts of "terrorist" and "traitor", and Palin's "palling around" remarks drawing cries of "Kill him!"

Palin then began dividing the country into "pro-America/real America" sections — patriotic small towns that work hard, defend the nation and support the McCain-Palin ticket — and urban areas that are, by implication, slothful, disloyal and pro-Obama.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," Palin said in Greensboro, North Carolina, on October 16.

"This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

A day later on MSNBC's Hardball show, Rep Michelle Bachman, R-Minnesota, defended those comments by citing Sen Obama's supposedly anti-American associations and urging the news media to investigate other anti-Americanism in Congress.

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an exposé like that," Bachman said.

In the hard-fought swing state of Virginia, representatives of the McCain campaign suggested that Democratic-leaning communities in northern Virginia were part of that disloyal, fake America.

Joe McCain, the candidate's brother, called Arlington and Alexandria "communist country", although John McCain's campaign headquarters and one of his seven homes are in Arlington.

On October 18, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer joined in disparaging northern Virginia, saying that "the rest of the state — real Virginia if you will — I think will be very responsive to Sen McCain's message."

When MSNBC host Kevin Corke suggested that Pfotenhauer might want to modify her comment — "Nancy, I'm going to give you a chance to climb back off that ledge — Did you say 'real Virginia'?" — Pfotenhauer instead expanded on her point.

"Real Virginia, I take to be, this part of the state that's more Southern in nature," she said.

It should be noted that during the civil rights era, the "communist" or "unreal-Virginia" communities of Arlington and Alexandria led the way in integrating public schools in the Commonwealth, which had a long and tragic history of slavery and segregation....

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