McCarthyism Redux: The McCain Campaign's Calumny Express

"Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism."

While these words seem tailor made for the divisive rhetoric of the McCain campaign, they were actually spoken more than 58 years ago on the floor of the United States Senate by Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine in her historic repudiation of the vicious character assassinations hurled by Senator Joseph McCarthy against countless Americans. Speaking on behalf of herself and six other Republican Senators, she said that, "The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as 'Communists' or 'Fascists' by their opponents."

The more popular epithets emanating from present-day Republican apparatchiks and the other flacks associated with the 2008 McCain campaign are "terrorist," "Muslim," and "anti-American," but their intent is the same as the red scare labels used so effectively by their McCarthyite role models: to depict their political adversaries generally, and Barack Obama specifically, as somehow dangerous, subversive, even evil.

The following are only a few examples:

• Sarah Palin has repeatedly - and falsely - accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists." This charge is particularly reprehensible because both she and John McCain know full well that Obama only had, to use Colin Powell's description, a "very, very limited relationship" with Bill Ayers on the board of a respected Republican-funded educational foundation in Chicago, and that Obama has repeatedly referred to Ayers as "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

• The Republican National Committee has been sending around a mailer with the image of what looks like a plane about to crash into a building and the menacing words "Terrorists - Don't Care Who They Hurt" on the cover. The inside of the mailer contains an oversized picture of Barack Obama and the words "Barack Obama. Not Who You Think He Is." When McCain was shown this brochure in Missouri earlier this week and asked if he was proud of it, he replied, "Absolutely."

• The McCain campaign and the RNC have launched a scurrilous automated telephonic robocall campaign charging "that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

• Craig S. MacGlashan, the chairman of the Sacramento Republican Party in Northern California, posted a photograph of Senator Obama alongside one of Osama bin Laden on his group's website with the explanation, "The only difference between Obama and Osama is B.S." and "Waterboard Barack Obama." (This material was removed from the website after protests from Democrats and Republicans, but MacGlashan has yet to apologize or retract his unsubtle message.)

• "Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain asked at a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on October 6th. When the crowd loudly and clearly responded, "Terrorist," McCain smiled and went on with his speech. He had gotten the reaction he wanted. McCain, his campaign and the RNC keep asking the rhetorical question, "Who Is Barack Obama?" in speeches and ads as a fear mongering tactic. Every once in a while, McCain pulls back and reprimands a supporter who has gotten his message, but these are the exceptions. On the whole, McCain and Palin seem to revel in their crowds' vehemence. Sarah Palin has never, not once, reprimanded any of her fans who shout "traitor" or "kill him" when she mentions Obama's name in her stump speech.

• Sarah Palin has referred to those parts of the country that support her and John McCain as the "pro-America areas of this great nation."

• Jeffrey M. Frederick, the Chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, has likened Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden in a pep talk to campaign volunteers, explaining that "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon. That is scary."

• Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann first told Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball that she was "very concerned" that Senator Obama "may have anti-American views," and then went on to say that "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?"

• North Carolina Republican Congressman Robin Hayes from North Carolina told a crowd that "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

• Marcia Stirman, the chair of the Otero County Republican Women in New Mexico, wrote in the in the Alamogordo Daily News that "I believe Muslims are our enemies," and that "Obama isn't a messiah or a Democrat. He's a Muslim socialist."

• Republican U.S. Senator Mel Martinez from Florida denounced Obama's economic policies as "Socialism, Communism, not Americanism."

Any one of these incidents, viewed in isolation, might be dismissed as an aberration. Together, they form a disquieting, unmistakable pattern.

Most recently, we also witnessed the McCain campaign's unseemly eagerness to promote the crude hoax that a six foot four African American attacked a white female volunteer. Even John Moody, the Executive Vice President of Fox News, was uncharacteristically suspicious. "If the incident turns out to be a hoax," Moody warned when the story first came out, "Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." Peter Feldman, the McCain campaign's Pennsylvania communications director, showed no such reticence when he urged at least two local Pittsburgh television stations, KDKA and WPXI, to feature a racially charged version of this train wreck, complete with fictional charges that the non-existent attacker had told the young woman that, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson," and that the backward "B" carved into her cheek supposedly stood for Barack. Much to the hapless Mr. Feldman's probable chagrin, it did not take long for the woman to confess that she had made the whole thing up, but by then, the Drudge Report and right wing radio talk show hosts had run with the sensationalist news flash.

Occasionally even the Republican trash machine realizes it has gone too far and they retreat a little. An email message from the Pennsylvania Republican Party's "Victory 2008" committee to Jewish voters in Pennsylvania that equated voting for Barack Obama with the "tragic mistake" of European Jews who "ignored the warning signs of the 1930s and 1940s" was repudiated by the state party, and the flack who had drafted the e-mail was fired because "he definitely went a little bit farther than the facts would support." Whew. We finally know the GOP's line in the sand. Comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden is ok, but summoning up Hitler is beyond the pale. Thank you so much for enlightening us.

In her 1950 Declaration of Conscience, Margaret Chase Smith said that "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny -- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear." John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party have knowingly resurrected these demons with a vengeance. We must not, we cannot let them get away with it.

Menachem Rosensaft, a lawyer in New York City, is the Founding Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Comments

[jabe]

I referenced this article in a blog post discussing how McCain's resorting to 1950s politics.
http://objectors.us/

[Winonaah]

MAH1952
You are naive. You need to remember that THEY are not the only ones who have guns and feel fear.

[Sherryfw]

I
I've been saying this for quite some time now.....Shades of McCarthyism, indeed.

I thought the American people learned something from that horrific era.

Isn't it pathetic that the Republican candidates and their campaign workers are spewing this hate and more pathetic, some Americans are buying it.

Shame, Shame.........

[JazzPuff]

I saw this happening months ago, and mentioned it in a blog; "If the RNC will practice the Smear and Mud Slinging, with no regard to truth how can it be any different than this definition-- “The practice of publicizing or speaking accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence”? "

I think it is unbelievable that any individual, especially candidates who have a captive audience reduce issues, morals, decency to that level. A candidate, in my opinion should be above innuendo and want to make us ALL strive to be better. This happened once in our society and I believe it destroyed those lives of everyone involved. The fact that the RNC has allowed for their campaign to take this discourse tells me that NO one is steering their ship, the tactless, tanker is sinking taking all of its crew to the bottom.

[MAH1952]

I realize that these comments are well meant but they are very naive. I truely believe this is the most important election since 1860 and we know where that one led. The neocons see this as the line in the sand, if they lose this then they have no recourse but to lash back with everything including the kitchen sink. Remember they have guns and fear and the mixture is volitile. If Obama loses then many Americans (probably most) will feel the election was stolen and in their own way withdraw from the electoral process. In either case unless someone trusted by both sides comes forth to bring discourse back into American politics we are in for a violent four years.

[TettoeAung]

Is that an example of how America, under George W Bush and the Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain and his VP nominee Sarah Palin, is going to spread democracy? The Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq will be very pleased with such good examples.

[lagumbo]

Let John McCain continue to spew his venom and hate. It will come back and bite him in the butt, I promise you.

[asafishthroughwater]

The most serious mistake Americans can make is underestimating the depths to which the Republicans will sink to steal this election. If you doubt this is true, you just haven't been paying attention.

[labqi]

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel !! And McBush is not the last scoundrel in history, 50 years from now a similar article will be written reminding the electorate about the McCain camp tactics, in the face of yet another scoundrel !!

[Hanuman]

"Politics without principles;
commerce without morality;
wealth without charity;
science without humanity;
education without character --
are not only useless, they are
positively dangerous."

The same 'character-less' people who are running the slimy McCain campaign are
the same types who lied to start a war -- who sold out most of their
fellow Americans through the lobbyists of various predator corporations -- who hobnob
with their like-minded bretheren who push tobacco, etc. throughout our world.

If the American people cannot see through these flag-waving, church-going hypocrites --
then, it is they who we deserve.

[jchastain]

Thank you Mr. Rosensaft for crystalizing our growing sense of dread at the unchecked hate rhetoric broadcast by the mainstream media with hardly a comment. Any one of the anti-blurts you catalogue should be met with a massive blowback--yet the RNC and McCain get hardly a slap on the wrist. Glad to know articulate voices will speak up, from Margaret Chase Smith to you, on behalf of all Americans. As a collateral point, one wonders about the failures of our society that produce whole communities of people unable to analyze and discern a demogogic message when they hear one....

[NWGuy]

Politics is based on a my team vs your team model and showing the differences between my team and your team is part and parcel of the process. In the end, however, there is an "us". Ideally, two teams vying for the crown raises the bar for both and "we" all benefit.

When one or both teams stop trying to raise the bar but only denigrates the other, then we all lose. When a team defines the other as a threat to the existence of the whole then the whole is in peril.

When terms or phrases that are emotionally laden and that illicit the propensity for violence, whether overtly expressed or tacitly endorsed, then a line has been crossed that does not belong in the politics of this great country. The team that employs such tactics are not really about America but themselves.

[lwfky]

I wonder if the vicious rhetoric that McCain and Palin have been spewing had anything to do with the just uncovered plot to assassinate Senator Obama?
I still say that McCain has lost all honor, and should be forever ashamed of the campaign he has run.

[UncivilLibertarian]

Shame and honor are things that have long been missing from Senator McCain's vocabulary, let alone his character. I have seen the measure of this man, and he is not someone I would feel comfortable leading children across the road, let alone leading this great nation. His career, starting with his time in the Navy, has been characterized by self-aggra­ndizement, nepotism, ill temper, a lack of integrity, and a lack of the type of intelligence needed to lead properly. Had he not been the son and grandson of admirals, he would never have achieved even a spot on a city council and he would have received a dishonorable discharge long before he wrecked a plane in Viet Nam.

[tigs]

Mc cain is saying it would be dangerous to have Nancy Pelosi, Reid, and Obama in total control for 4 yrs, better than 4 more years of Bush control, Mc cain is twisting Obama words ,Mc cain is the one to fear he is voicing words of devision and lies. GET out and vote early ,if you cant vote till nov 4th ,have patience on the day, check your registration ,be prepared. It will be an historic day in America when Obama is president ,vote and make it happen.

[iralarry]

Menachem Rosensaft does a nice job of summing up the totality of the McCain campaign tactical methodology. It would seem clear by now that these approaches have failed McCain/Palin as badly as their platform, their proximity to Bush/Cheney, the choice to pick Palin and mostly as I see it, an overwhelmingly superior plan for this country, even if it takes years, to lead this country back to the glory days of American pride not born of isolationism or McCarthyism or religious fervor but of the sheer joy of work and save and buy a home and raise a decent law abiding family. Now we languish in despair, faint hope and way too many issues to ponder leaving us feeling a lassitude and bewilderment uncharacteristic of the drive and energy we once felt when we had purpose beyond simply paying bills and trying to get ahead.

[ChangeNow]

I saw something scary today. I went to Bass Pro Shops - a giant hunting / fishing / camping superstore, and discovered that they were nearly sold out of 9mm, 223, and 45 ammunition. They had sold out of buckshot. I asked a clerk what had happened, assuming there was a weekend sale or something. He replied that people were buying ammo out of fear of election day riots. I then called a guy I know at another shop, and he was experiencing the same thing. AR-15s, AKs, and the like were flying out of the store, as was ammo. He had sold 10,000 rounds of 223 in one day out of his tiny shop.

What the hell have we become?

[Birdman]

Well what we have become at least 51% of us anyway, are scared chicken hawks. I spent 12 years in the military and shot all kinds of weapons and guess what I do not own any as a civilian, I pretty much had my fill of fire power. Am I afraid of my shadow? No, am I afraid of terrorists? Not any more afraid then I am of getting struck by lightning. Are we going to have riots? I doubt it, I do expect Republicans to try and block access to the polls because these 51%'s are afraid of a sensible, intelligent, diplomatic, and educated black man telling them what to do. They prefer a regular guy like them that can get in their bunker with them and drink beer and talk about McCarthy, Russians, and Terrorist (or tearest to pronounce it as Bush does)