Palin Supporters Crazy And Not In A Good Way.

CNN wrote:

With recent polls showing Sen. Barack Obama's lead increasing nationwide and in several GOP-leaning states, some Republicans attending McCain-Palin campaign rallies have taken on a new emotion: Rage.

"When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It's time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them," one man told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

It's almost a cry for help, with the GOP party faithful amazed McCain could possibly be losing.

"And we're all wondering why that Obama is where he's at, how he got here. I mean, everybody in this room is stunned that we're in this position," another man said at a rally.

"I'm mad. I'm really mad. And what's going to surprise you, it's not the economy. It's the socialists taking over our country," another man said.

CNN contributor David Gergen said that the negative tone of these rallies is "incendiary" and could lead to violence.

"There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we're not far from that," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday. "I really worry when we get people -- when you get the kind of rhetoric that you're getting at these rallies now. I think it's really imperative that the candidates try to calm people down."

Recently, McCain's campaign launched a string of new ads that question Obama's judgment and character.

The McCain campaign calls Obama "too risky for America" in a new Web ad that focuses on his political relationship with Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical Weather Underground.

"Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They've worked together for years. But Obama tries to hide it," the announcer said in the 90-second ad.

The now-defunct Weather Underground was involved in bombings in the early 1970s, including attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama was a young child at the time of the bombings.

Obama and Ayers, now a university professor, met in 1995, when both worked with a nonprofit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Quoted in The New York Times, Obama called Ayers "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

At a rally Tuesday in Clearwater, Florida, Sarah Palin said Obama was being "less than truthful" about his ties to Ayers. "His own top adviser said they were 'certainly friendly.' ... I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America -- as the greatest source for good in this world," she said.

Palin told the crowd that she sees "a pattern in how our opponent has talked about one of his most troubling associations."

One member of the Palin audience in Jacksonville, Florida, Tuesday shouted out "treason." And at another rally in the state Monday, Palin's mention of the Obama-Ayers tie caused one member to yell out: "kill him" -- though it was unclear if it was targeted at Obama or Ayers.

At several recent rallies, Palin has stirred up crowds by mentioning the "liberal media." Routinely, there are boos at every mention of The New York Times and the "mainstream media," both of which are staples of Palin's stump speech.

Some audience members are openly hostile to members of the traveling press covering Palin; one crowd member hurled a racial epithet at an African-American member of the press in Clearwater, Florida, on Monday.

And at a McCain rally in New Mexico on Monday, one supporter yelled out "terrorist" when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain didn't respond.

So far, neither Palin nor McCain have explicitly called on their supporters to tamp down the attacks.

On Friday, Obama touched on the rage found at recent McCain-Palin rallies, saying the "barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks" was a result of the Republican nominees' failed economic ideas.

"They can run misleading ads, they can pursue the politics of anything goes. It will not work. Not this time. I think that folks are looking for something different this time. It's easy to rile up a crowd, nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious," Obama said at a rally in Chillicothe, Ohio.

But some anger found at McCain-Palin rallies is, however, directed at McCain.

"I am begging you, sir, I am begging you, take it to him," another supporter said to the Arizona senator at the Wisconsin rally.

McCain, however, seems torn. On one hand, he is going negative on the Ayers controversy.

"The point is, Sen. Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood. We know that's not true," he said at the rally in Wisconsin. "We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not."

On the other hand, McCain is trying to focus on the economic downturn plaguing the country.

"But I also, my friends, want to address the greatest financial challenge of our lifetime with a positive plan for action," he added.

Also, the McCains said months ago they didn't want their son Jimmy -- a Marine serving in Iraq -- dragged into the campaign.

But on Thursday, Cindy McCain brought up her son.

She criticized the Illinois senator for voting against a bill to fund troops in Iraq, a regular line of attack from her husband's campaign.

"The day that Sen. Obama cast a vote not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you," she told a Pennsylvania crowd before introducing her husband and his No. 2.


The vote Cindy McCain is referencing came in May 2007, when Obama was one of 14 senators who voted against a war-spending plan that would have provided emergency funds for American troops overseas.

A CNN fact check deemed the charge that Obama voted against troop funding "misleading."

CNN's Carey Bodenheimer contributed to this article.

Here.

You know, I've been wondering when, if ever, conservatives would have to take responsibility for the seeds that they have been sowing for many years (definitely since Clinton). The hatred for "teh liberal" that is being actively encouraged by a handful of talking head conservatives does have an effect on "Jane and John Sixpack," particularly those who take the message seriously AND/OR who equate their religious fervor with their political ideals.

Already this year we've had a shooting by a conservative terrorist at a Unitarian Church and another killing by a conservative terrorist at a Democratic headquarters. This is to say nothing of the dozens of terroristic activities that Women's health clinics routinely, still to this day, survive.

The words that you use are powerful, particularly when you engage in constant streams of propaganda and characterize the other side as "evil" or "the enemy" as people like Limbaugh and Coulter do ad nauseam.

I do not understand why they do not understand that there are consequences for these incendiary practices. I simply hope that no one else is killed or hurt when someone does take their messages to heart.

And, while I do not like either McCain or Palin, I do have to say that I am very disappointed that neither one of them thinks it's important to address the comments their supporters throw out during speeches. They wouldn't have to rail against it or even talk about it for a long time, a simple "violence is not the answer my friends" would be good enough for me. Both of these candidates have previous political experience. They should know that in every contest, you cannot smirk when someone proposes doing harm to the person opposing you. These are your supporters, they are still behind you (for some unfathomable reason). Ask them to do something, and they WILL do it. Fail to advise them against something, smirk in aquiescence to what they shout, and you're sending very wrong and very dangerous messages.

It may already be too late.

Yahoo News wrote:

LAKEVILLE, Minn. - The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.

McCain changed his tone Friday when supporters at a town hall pressed him to be rougher on Obama. A voter said, "The people here in Minnesota want to see a real fight." Another said Obama would lead the U.S. into socialism. Another said he did not want his unborn child raised in a country led by Obama.

"If you want a fight, we will fight," McCain said. "But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." When people booed, he cut them off.

"I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity," he said. "I just mean to say you have to be respectful."

Presidential candidates are accustomed to raucous rallies this close to Election Day and welcome the enthusiasm. But they are also traditionally monitors of sorts from the stage. Part of their job is to leaven proceedings if tempers run ragged and to rein in an out-of-bounds comment from the crowd.

Not so much this week, at GOP rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and other states.

When a visibly angry McCain supporter in Waukesha, Wis., on Thursday told the candidate "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."

The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. If less directly, McCain, too, has sought to exploit Obama's Chicago neighborhood ties to William Ayers, while trying simultaneously to steer voters' attention to his plans for the financial crisis.

The Alaska governor did not campaign with McCain on Friday, and his rally in La Crosse, Wis., earlier Friday was much more subdued than those when the two campaigned together. Still, one woman shouted "traitor" when McCain told voters Obama would raise their taxes.

Volunteers worked up chants from the crowd of "U.S.A." and "John McCain, John McCain," in an apparent attempt to drown out boos and other displays of negative energy.

The Secret Service confirmed Friday that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday, meaning Obama. There was "no indication that there was anything directed at Obama," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told AP. "We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of an abundance of caution."

Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters "it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited" to scrutinize Obama's iffy associations.

But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center 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.

WTF is wrong with these people?!

These people are so desperate to control other people's lives by having the country run as a Christian Theocracy, that they are horrified to see it all slipping away. I cannot express in words how much they disgust me.

futureshock wrote:

These people are so desperate to control other people's lives by having the country run as a Christian Theocracy, that they are horrified to see it all slipping away. I cannot express in words how much they disgust me.

What she said !
And why is the McShame campaign so quiet about Palin being found guilty of abusing the power of her office and giving her husband too much access to public officals via her office?

Because they already issued a report of their own clearing her. Why should they pay attention to things like "independent investigations" and "laws"?

rofl!!!!!!!!