And it must stop.
Wade Williams, a 75-year-old Louisiana man was arrested for threatening to kill election officials yesterday.
The Smoking Gun: “Angered by a delay in the receipt of his voter registration card, a Louisiana man today threatened to shoot election officials, claiming that he urgently needed to cast a ballot to ‘keep the nigger out of office,’ according to police. Wade Williams, 75, was arrested this morning on a felony terrorizing charge after allegedly calling the Registrar of Voters and warning that he would come to the state office and empty his shotgun unless he got his registration card.”
In addition to McCain supporters yelling out slurs of “terrorist” at McCain rallies and “kill him” at Palin rallies, with no objections from the candidates themselves, there has been more.
Check out the clip to the left at a Palin rally in Strongville, Ohio (via Pam).
MSNBC reports: “As seen at recent McCain events, this afternoon’s crowd was vocal in their support for McCain and their anger with Senator Obama. At one point one man could be heard yelling, ‘Off with his head,’ when McCain spoke about Obama’s tax plan.”
Off with his head?
McCain’s Tuesday night referral to Obama as “that one” feeds right into this. It’s an attempt to dehumanize him as a candidate and an individual.
Is any of this presidential? No. It’s sickening. It’s inciting division, hate, and racism, and, as evidenced by the Wade Williams arrest above, violence. The McCain campaign has gone so far as to release a disgusting TV spot about Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers yesterday (right) in an attempt to smear Obama with associations to “domestic terrorism.”
Yesterday, Obama told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “Why don’t we just clear it up right now. I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois . . . And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that . . . I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist’, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”
Yesterday, McCain appeared in an interview with Sean Hannity to bring up the Ayers story (left), yet he won’t even address it to Barack Obama’s face.
CNN’s Campbell Brown notes that twice in the last week McCain surrogates have referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama.”
Says Brown: The implication is clear. It’s foreign-sounding, it’s Muslim-sounding, it’s un-American-sounding. It’s dangerous-sounding. What it is is race-baiting. And that is what is dangerous.”
Watch Campbell Brown, AFTER THE JUMP…
