The shocked look on McCain’s face yesterday when that person in the crowd yelled he’s “a terrorist” said it all. He recoiled as if he never expected to hear something like that. It was the look of a guy who just realized that he might have just gone to a dark place he didn’t want to go to.
In the comments there’s the usual calls for Republicans and for McCain and Palin to disavow the growing tone of violence, and I don’t disagree that they should if for no other reason than maybe the slavering hordes would actually listen and anything that chills these people the fuck out is necessary in my book. From a practical standpoint, please throw a bucket of cold water on these nutjobs. Cold water with some quaaludes in it.
From a standpoint of political strategy, though? From the point of view of denouncing this stuff as a way to appeal to moderates and independents? Um, no. THEY DON’T GET TO DISAVOW IT. Not this time. Not anymore. They don’t get to step back and say, whoa, what the, we don’t mean this, forget that shit, no, no, not us, I was just holding this white robe for a friend, Officer. They have been counting on this crap to get elected for years. They have been holding hands with these regressive freaks for YEARS, all the while pretending they were moderates, and so long as they mouthed platitudes about supporting situational and economic and coded racism but not outright calling anybody the n-word, it was all okay, and Chris Matthews could continue to yank his junk to John McCain’s biography without feeling any ickier than he does on any day ending in Y.
It’s not even that I have some confidence they’ll come out and call for people to act like grownups. I don’t think they will. Not if they truly want to win this election: It’s all they’ve got left and you wanna bet they’ll shovel it out in cubic tons in the next four weeks? I don’t care if they say to our faces that they don’t agree, or don’t support, or don’t even KNOW what’s going on behind the curtains. It defies credulity. You cannot say, in 2008, that you do not know that this is a party elected in nearly every case by appeals to racism, coded or not.
You cannot say, in 20fucking08, that you didn’t think losing to a black dude is gonna cause the freaks you’ve been keeping in cages in your basement to chew right through the bars. You don’t get to stand there in your living room as they smash furniture and crockery and say you didn’t know they were there. You went down there every day to feed them raw steak, whiskey, and crystal meth. You heard them growling. You knew. You fucking knew. You can say you don’t support what they do, but you’re the one who kept them on your property. You don’t get to disavow SHIT. Not anymore.
A.