Tiger by the Tail: McCain/Palin Campaign of Fear Works Too Well

I remember as a little boy hearing a missionary at my church tell a story about a political rally he’d witnessed in Romania, sometime in the years leading up to the revolution. As President Nicolae Ceauşescu spoke, one woman out of the masses had the courage to speak up. “Liar!” she shouted. “You’re a liar!” And she spat on the ground in disgust, before promptly being carried away, likely never to be heard from again.

The late Communist President of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, who had the good fortune not to have to call himself out on his own lies.

This week, confronted with the sobering fact that none of the attendees of McCain/Palin rallies had a similar courage to call the nominees out on their lies and demagoguery, John McCain finally had to step up to the plate and do it himself. Let me say that again: he repudiated himself.



I’d like to say I was happy to see “the old McCain” make a rare reappearance, peeking out like a little like a fleeting whack-a-mole before disappearing again beneath the tide of negativism that has overwhelmed his campaign.

But for at least two weeks now, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin, trailing in the polls, have been beating the drum that Sen. Obama is the candidate of false gods, palls around with terrorists, supports the killing of babies born alive in failed abortions, is funded by “foreigners,” doesn’t love his country, doesn’t support the troops, and condones the damnation of America by Rev. Wright. Their surrogates have been comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden, referring to Obama by including his loaded-word middle name – “Let’s leave Barack HUSSEIN Obama wondering what happened” – and calling him “a guy of the street.” Somehow I don’t think they mean Main Street.

After mentioning all these things, McCain’s been connecting the cognitive dots for his followers by asking over and over at rallies, “Who IS the real Barack Obama?”

Responding to these highly developed Rorsach inkblot tests, McCain/Palin followers and other GOP supporters have been heard screaming “terrorist,” “traitor,” and “treason” at the merest mention of Barack Obama. Some, in a violent fervor, have screamed racial epithets at the media crews. Others have yelled, “Off with his head!” Still others have dispensed with politeness altogether and apoplectically ejaculated, “Kill him!” and “Bomb him!”

When McCain has clearly heard the charges at his rallies before, he's not missed a beat. And they've clearly had tons of opportunities to condemn these things after learning about them later, even if they didn't hear them at the time. So McCain pretending to put “country first” and stick up for Obama now is a little like throwing a match on a gasoline spill in a garage, and then blowing on it and pretending you don’t know how it got there.

Now, don’t mistake me. I think it’s important to know everything we can about the candidates. The problem is that this territory has been gone over very thoroughly by the press and in umpteen debates. Most of us know more about Barack Obama’s life now than we do about our own cousins. This rehashing of old non-news is about nothing more than equivocation, circumlocution, innuendo, thinly veiled inflammation, and the overall trashing of Barack Obama.

Any person who’s ever sat through a Communications 101 class knows that for there to be a communication, you have to have a sender, a receiver, and a message. To be an effective communication, the message that the receiver hears must bear strong resemblance to the one the sender intended to relay.

In this best-case scenario, John McCain and Sarah Palin are dangerously inept at sending messages. At worst, they are brilliantly effective at communicating exactly the messages they intended to. Either way, their conduct is shockingly unbecoming at least someone of McCain’s stature, and it’s definitely an insult to the eternal dignity and the present distress of the American people.

I come from a long line of very sincere and credulous conservatives who love God and country, but who sadly put more faith in Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly than in verifiable facts. I have two sainted Grandmas, one of whom believes that doctors no longer give B-12 vitamin shots because “the immigrants took them,” the other of whom believes that Barack Obama may be the Antichrist. And my own Dad persists, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in believing that Obama is a secret Muslim.

They are not senile, and they are not making things up. They believe it with all their hearts, just as surely as I believe that the atomic number of hydrogen is 1. I get frustrated with them, but I get angry at the people who feed them this misinformation in order to benefit from their belief – higher ratings, bigger paychecks, and victorious elections. To what I believe will be his eternal discredit, John McCain has decided to become one of those people.

With Michael Dukakis and the “Willie Horton ad,” the Republicans said he’d be weak on crime and played to people’s racial discomfort. With John Kerry, Republicans painted him as weak on national security and terrorism. Now, afraid to leave anything to the imagination, Republicans and the McCain/Palin campaign have all but stated that Barack Obama is a criminal, a terrorist, and a racist. What a sad day for a once-great party.

In criminal law, there are two doctrines that defendants often have a hard time wrapping their brains around. One, the felony murder doctrine, says that if someone dies during the commission of a felony like kidnapping or armed robbery, the kidnappers are on the hook for first-degree murder, regardless of intent. If you and your buddy rob a convenience store, and the store clerk pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and kills your buddy, guess who’s going to prison for murder? You. Why? Because when you play with fire like that, you ought to know that somebody could get killed.

The other doctrine is accountability, which says that you are responsible for the conduct of another when you solicit, aid, abet, agree or attempt to aid the other person’s commission of the offense. So for instance, if your buddy says to you, “Man, I’d like to rob a convenience store,” and you let him borrow your gun, you’re going to be accountable for that robbery. And if the clerk shoots your friend, guess what? Felony murder and accountability work together to make you guilty of murder, even if you’re sitting at home eating Doritos. The law makes you responsible not only for things that you know, but for things that you should know.

What’s my point? My point is that this country, in the midst of two wars and a hemorrhaging economy, is on edge. People are nervous about the present, let alone the future. And let’s be frank: even well-meaning people are nervous about the specter of the first black president, whose name has the bad fortune of sounding like BOTH of America’s arch-enemies. This is a time to tread very, very lightly on the tense tightrope of the American people’s fears.

And besides the fact that it’s doing nothing to resolve any of our several crises, the McCain/Palin rhetoric is fanning the flames of resentment, of hatred, and of abject terror, aiding and abetting some of the most extreme elements and violent tendencies in our populace. If they didn’t know about the volatility of those tendencies, they should have known, as any reasonable person familiar with American history undoubtedly does. (See, exempli gratia, Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby. Not to mention James and William, and very nearly Franklin, Harry, Jerry, and Ronald.)

It’s simply not credible now for the McCain/Palin camp to try to wash its hands of this nastiness. This is a monster of their own creation, and they ought to own up to it.

More Babykilling Lies to Help McCain/Palin Win

According to Talking Points Memo, the National Right to Life Committee is about to release a slanderous ad to help McCain and Palin steal and election with outright lies.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. As a criminal appeals attorney in Illinois, I have to say that the "live-birth abortion" charges are flat-out lies.

Moreover, it is a mistake for Democrats and those on the Left to just ignore these charges because they seem unexplainable, thinking, "Oh crap, that's really bad. Let's just pretend we didn't hear that."

These charges are not hard to explain. But "The Swamp" has gotten it wrong, "FactCheck.org" has gotten it wrong, and most of the non-legal analyses I've seen have gotten it wrong -- particularly from folks outside Illinois who might not be clear on how our legislature works.

Please go here, check my links, and see for yourself that the National Right to Life is engaging in a lying slander campaign rather than discussing genuine policy differences it may have with Sen. Obama. http://enough2008.blogspot.com/2008/09/born-alive-babykilling-bs-obamabiden.html

Democrats Should Steer Clear of "Siren Sarah"

I think the McCain campaign is finally catching on that things aren't going well. Barack Obama has led in the daily Gallup poll for five days, and John McCain hasn't led for two weeks. Best guesses on electoral votes range from 255 to 227 Obama, to 286 to 225 Obama, to 301 to 237 Obama, to 331 to 207 Obama.

And there's no clear end in sight. The economy is in the ditch, and while neither candidate seems particularly expert in economics, Obama has some very competent people on his economic team, while McCain has the bad fortune of having surrounded himself with precisely the kind of people who have helped cause the problem, like former Sen. Phil Gramm, and the kind of people whom Americans are disgusted with, like lobbyist Rick Davis and golden-parachuted CEO Carly Fiorina.

Conservatives of the old school are in revolt over Gov. Sarah Palin, Republicans can't get their act together, and even the most superstitious/anxious/cynical Democrats are having to shake themselves to avoid visions of premature inauguration.

So what does the McCain camp do? It sends out Gov. Palin as the bait in two distinct traps, extremely attractive to Democrats and extremly, extremely deadly.

Discerning Democratic mice will resist the urge to pounce on this tasty morsel of Palin provolone.

First Trap: Red Meat



In case you haven't seen the latest installment of the gift that keeps on giving, watch the video above as Katie Couric unrolls a few more lengths of rope for Palin to use to hang herself.

Of course, I think much of what Palin has to say is ridiculous, but more than that, I think the way she says it illustrates just how unready she is even to be a part of this campaign, let alone to lead America, and thus the world.

But step back from this for a minute and think about the dangers this interview poses for Democrats. Here are big hunks of juicy tidbits that voters, columnists, bloggers, and pundits can't resist -- ABORTION!!! BIRTH CONTROL!!! HOMOSEXUALITY!!! RELIGION!!!

But I believe it would be an absolute mistake to take the bait, and here's why. For starters, these aren't far-out wacky views, or at least if they are, they're held by a substantial number of Americans. America's largest Protestant denomination -- the Southern Baptists, with 16.2 million members -- and the Roman Catholic Church in America accounts for one quarter of our population. Guess what these denominations teach? That abortion is murder, the morning-after pill is murder, and homosexuality is a choice. This is to say nothing of the Assemblies of God, Churches of God, Disciples of Christ, et alii.

Unless people think that somehow Democrats can win with skeptics, atheists, and Unitarians, there's got to be a place at the table for people of all beliefs and traditions. These issues just aren't the most important ones in America.

That brings me to my second reason to avoid the culture-war bait. When the national conversation gets bogged down in the culture wars, Democrats lose. It's not necessarily because half the country agrees with Palin. It's that people who disagree with her can never be as forceful as those who agree with her. If you don't think that the morning-after pill is murder or that being gay is a chosen abomination, you'll never be able to match passions with people who do. (Unless, perhaps, you are gay without equal rights or unexpectedly pregnant without access to an early-term abortion, which certainly must account for a minority of Americans.)

To put it another way, most potential Democratic voters don't go to sleep at night thinking, "Man, I could really use an abortion," or, "Gosh, I wish I could have a gay marriage." For that matter, they don't go to sleep wondering just how stupid that Gov. Palin will look the next time she opens her mouth for a primetime interview or a cheesesteak sandwich.

They go to sleep wondering how they're going to pay for their health insurance, how they'll keep their jobs, what will happen to their folks when they get older and dont't have nursing home insurance, and whether their sons and daughters will ever come home safely from two wars that seem to have no end. So if the Democrats spend all their time talking to American voters about how they'll give them evolution education and the morning-after pill, voters will tune it out the way I tune out the infomercials for the Jack Lelane Juicer I don't need.

Polling shows this. Go back and look at where the McCain-Palin ticket stood in the polls when the national narrative was about "lipstick on a pig" and Obama killing babies. Those conversations miss the voters you can get and really really energize the voters you hope stay home.

Liberals like Unitarian Keith Olbermann (whom I generally like) and agnostic Bill Maher (whom I don't), if they really support Barack Obama, do themselves no favors deriding not the extreme policies of the McCain/Palin ticket but the personal convictions of the members of that ticket, which untold millions of Americans share.

Serious-minded Democrats should distance themselves from these criticisms of Palin's no-doubt genuine religious views and keep the focus on the economy, the war, and the disaster that was the last eight years. If someone says, "I think all the gays are going to hell," say, "Terrific. How does that help you feed your family?"

Second Trap: Wounded Animal

The other snare Palin is setting with her Siren song is one of low expectations. President Bush has famously spoken of the "soft bigotry of low expectations," but in this case, I think the Republicans in the short-term only stand to gain from how little the country has come to expect from Gov. Palin.

We've already seen the McCain camp exploit these expectations once before. When McCain first named Palin right before his convention, bloggers and partisans nationwide spent four solid days denouncing the decision simultaneously as a boneheaded blunder and a self-serving stunt, rapidly firing every possible criticism at Palin to see what stuck. She was a book-banner! Her daughter was knocked up! The First Dude had a 20-year-old DUI! She'd fired someone for political reasons! People were running pools to see how long she'd survive on the Republican ticket.

And then what happened? She stood up and read a great speech from a teleprompter at the convention, and Democrats looked stupid. They'd made her look like a victim, a martyr, a working-class hero. Meanwhile, Gov. Palin -- still unqualified, mind you, and still extremely dangerous to our nation -- was innoculated from criticism for weeks to come.

It took CBS's Katie Couric (someone else who's faced the soft bigotry of low expectations) to really pull back the curtain on the Wizard to let American voters sneak a peek to observe what Democrats had ham-handedly tried to pound into their heads a month before: Palin was clueless.

But rather than having learned their lesson, Democrats (and some Republicans, by the way) are piling on again, Democrats gloating at how abysmal Palin is, Republicans fretting and begging her to fall on her moose gun for the good of party and country. The result is that come this Thursday night, when she has to debate Sen. Joe Biden in the vice-presidential face-off, expectations are set so low for her that if she manages not to trip or swear, she'll be hailed for proving those snobby elitist critics wrong again.

Moreover, wounded animals are always 100 times fiercer than animals in good shape, so I reckon that the wound-ier the McCain campaign gets, the more ferocious its attacks on Obama/Biden will become.

What's the right approach? I say back off and let Palin continue to write her own epitaph. The American people are not stupid. Between the War on Terror and the Terrible Economy, folks know that times are tough and fraught with the potential for disaster. They also know that John McCain is old and more likely to die in office than any president we've had at least since Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term. The more they see of Palin, the more even her admirers are going to realize, "Darn the luck, she seems like a swell lady, but we just don't have the luxury of rolling the dice on her."

Don't make her a martyr. Don't waste breath and column inches pointing out what Palin daily makes painfully obvious. Let Palin be Palin -- in fact, just let Palin be -- and let's take our argument for real, lasting Change to the American people, reminding them at every turn that John McCain isn't it.

Told You So: Republican Front Group Accuses Obama of Babykilling

Remember just three days ago when I said that Republicans would try to say Barack Obama voted to kill babies? Well call me a prophet.



Presuming this lady is telling the truth, I feel for her plight, and so does Sen. Obama. That's why he opposes late-term abortions except in cases in which the mother's life or health is in grave danger.

But as I've said before, Illinois law has protected babies born alive in failed abortions since 1975. Really!

"(b) Subsequent to the abortion, if a child is born alive, the physician required by Section 6(2)(a) to be in attendance shall exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion. Any such physician who intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly violates Section 6(2)(b) commits a Class 3 felony."

Don't believe the lies.

Are Republican Values *Your* Values?

Despite how innocuous and down-home friendly John McCain and Sarah "Oh Shoot" Palin seem, it is the stated policy of the Republican Party to call for a federal constitutional amendment not only banning gay marriage but also ensuring "that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it" (a.k.a., no civil unions either, nor even those "legal agreements" McCain keeps saying he supports).

It's also the Party's stated policy to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn "Roe v. Wade," allowing States to ban completely even early-term abortions. Like most Americans, including Sen. Obama, I'm against late-term abortions, but come on? Even banning the morning-after pill?

If these policies are also your policies, then McCain/Palin is your team. No doubt about it, if you want a gay marriage amendment or an overturning-Roe amendment, Obama is not your guy. I just think it's important that folks don't delude themselves into thinking gay and choice issues would look the same under a McCain administration as they would under an Obama administration.

Born-Alive Babykilling Lies.: Obama/Biden Would Protect Babies, Women, AND Common Sense

If you haven't heard it yet, soon enough, I promise you you'll hear some version of the following:

“Senator Barack Obama supports the killing of LIVE BABIES. That’s right. When faced with a chance to protect babies accidentally born in abortions gone awry, the heartless, wicked, cold-blooded psychopathic pawn-of-Satan Senator Obama said, ‘Let ‘em die!’”

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Jon Stewart on the September 3 episode of The Daily Show that Obama voted for "infanticide"a in the Illinois State Senate. Can you help me count what Al Franken would call the "lies and the lying liars who tell them?"

Calling Democrats babykillers is nothing new, but what IS new is that now, the GOP wants Americans to believe Sen. Obama would kill babies AFTER they’re born. He’d even like to kill Sarah Palin’s baby Trig, if Rush Limbaugh can be believed.

Republicans have broken out their same old fear-and-lies playbook. In his Republican Convention speech, Fred Thompson -- that biggest overhyped American disappointment since New Coke -- sounded trotted out the ridiculous and sickening line that Sen. Obama was, in fact, a person who’d be glad to let the unborn, or the newly born, die.

What Thompson referred to is a widely circulated lie that while Sen. Obama was in the Illinois Senate, he voted to let infants born alive in failed abortions die.

Pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and ask yourself this question: would a man who supported the killing of babies born *alive* be one step away from being the president of the United States? Of course he wouldn’t! He wouldn’t be so much as a dog catcher.

The reason Obama opposed the bills with the loaded name “Born Alive Protection Act” in the Illinois Senate is a matter of public record for all who care to look it up. It so happens that I so cared. Reading the transcript of the Illinois Senate on the 20th Legislative Day of the 92nd Illinois General Assembly, March 30, 2001, pages 84-90 -- along with other research -- here is what you would find:

I. Babies are already protected in Illinois.First of all, Illinois criminal law has protected babies born in botched abortions since 1975 – two short years after Roe v. Wade. In Illinois, letting a viable baby die after being born alive in an abortion screw-up is a Class 3 felony, punishable by 2 to 5 years in prison, according to 720 ILCS 510/6(2)(b).

Furthermore, even if we didn’t have that law, we already have another, more general law in Illinois that protects infants who are born alive: the murder statute! 720 ILCS 5/9-1.

II. These bills would have said, in effect, that life and full citizenship rights begin at the very instant of conception.

The "born-alive" bills had nothing to do protecting infants who are born alive, a goal that (A) is already accomplished by other law and (B) surely isn’t objectionable to any reasonable person. So if you're like me, once you realize the bills aren't about what they claim to be about, you ask yourself, "Hmmm, what were the bills really about?"

The bills would have amended the Illinois code to say, in effect, that all babies are entitled to full citizenship and personhood rights under the 14th Amendment from the moment of conception. The three companion bills packaged together: one, two, and three.

As you read, keep in mind that only underlined portions or strikethrough portions reflect suggested changes to the law; the language not underlined and not struck through is the law as it already reads, protecting babies born alive. Therefore, the underlined or strikethrough words were the only words being voted on; everything else was already the law. Republicans are trying to make it seem like Obama voted against every word in those bills, which is flatly not the case.

On the surface, these laws don't sound too sinister, and all the GOP surrogates have been making fun of Obama for saying at Saddleback Forum last month that deciding when life began was “above my pay grade.” Unlike Obama, they claim to know exactly how God feels about this issue, and not surprisingly, they claim God agrees with them: life begins at conception.

But Sen. Obama realized that that position, and the bills that would enforce it, would have drastic and far-reaching implications, and so he voted against the bills, even realizing the vote would be tough to explain to constituents, knowing that babies from failed abortions had ALWAYS been protected in Illinois and this bill was just a dangerous political ploy.

Let’s consider the consequences of the bills, which would have given citizenship rights to “infants” at every stage of development, from the moment the sperm meets the egg.

It means that not only would abortion be the same as murder, but so would in vitro fertilization, which creates tons of extra fertilized eggs and then wastes them. Let me say that again: if the Illinois legislature had passed a set of laws saying that life begins at conception, then mothers and fathers who have trouble getting pregnant would be MURDERERS for seeking in vitro fertilization – and multiple murderers at that. In fact, they’d be looking at life sentences for the murder of their embryos. Maybe even the death penalty.

And for that matter, laws saying that even the earliest embryos are fully vested with citizenship rights would mean that mothers who have miscarriages because they drink too much caffeine or exercise too vigorously would have to be prosecuted for reckless homicide, which in Illinois is a Class 3 felony punishable by 2 to 5 years in prison. That's what we'd be looking at: putting people in prison for early-stage abortions, for the morning-after pill, for in vitro fertilization, and for miscarriages that their actions caused. Under a law like that, pregnant women would basically have to stay on a nine-month bed rest just to be sure they weren’t prosecuted. Is that the kind of law that passes for sensible judgment to Republicans?

But why stop there? If a sperm plus an egg equals a citizen, then all the embryos that are cryogenically frozen are either prisoners or slaves, and the full force of the criminal law would have to be used against the doctors and fertility clinics that harbored these embryos, either for unlawful restraint or slavery.

And why stop there? Why not ban birth control, too? After all, the decision that said birth control couldn't be banned, Griswold v. Connecticut, is only eight years older than Roe v. Wade, which still isn't settled in some folks’ minds. If we really want to make sure that every embryo is brought to term, banning birth control is the logical next step.

I'm not trying to stretch the facts or make light of this. I'm deadly serious, and if you think this all sounds absolutely crazy, you are right. That’s exactly what Sen. Obama thought when he voted against these bills in the Illinois Senate.

And he wasn’t alone. In fact, seven Illinois senators voted “no,” and 15 senators voted “present,” including Roman Catholic Republican State Senator (and former candidate for State Treasurer) Christine Radogno, who certainly would never have voted for some bill killing babies.

Illinois State Senator (and 2006 GOP candidate for State Treasurer) Christine Radogno. If Sen. Obama is a radical, vicious babykiller, then so is this 56-year-old Roman Catholic graduate of a Jesuit university and married mother of three.

So the idea that somehow Sen. Obama is some wide-eyed liberal babykiller is just sickeningly crazy. Obama said at the time that if that radical language were removed, “we might have compromised and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a pre-viable fetus or child was treated by a hospital.” And Obama supported the federal version of the bill which passed with overwhelming support, without any of the crazy language with which the Illinois bills were freighted.

I don’t think the Illinois Republicans really wanted to pass the bills. They would've been disastrous, for their party and for the law. But I don't know what’s more upsetting: the idea that Republicans would dress radical bills in wholesome-sounding names to trick their constituents into an uproar, or the idea that some people – including Sarah Palin and, apparently, John McCain – actually believe that citizenship begins at conception, and that their view should be enforced with the full sanction of criminal and constitutional law.


I guess the Republican Party hasn’t taken to heart God's counsel in the Book of Isaiah 55:9: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” Meanwhile, Sen. Obama has the humility to recognize that only God knows when life begins.


But Obama also has solid plans in place to help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and to help support women who find themselves with those pregnancies. How does the McCain/Palin campaign plan to reduce those pregnancies and provide for the ones that result in babies?


I know that most people reading this now will think, "Who would ever believe such vicious lies?" But mark my words: these attacks will only increase, and you need only Google Barack Obama Born Alive to see I'm right. Take these facts to heart and pass them on so that this campaign can be about truth, not lies.