Let Slip The Dogs Of War

I said it yesterday that race was about to blow up. It's happening. The McCain campaign has nothing left. Their poll numbers are collapsing. The economy, the weakest of all their weak issues, is tanking. Palin is now seen for what she is: a fraud. All they have is race.

They are dancing about in their high heels. They only claim the gloves are off, but we can see they are clearly there and they are all too obviously white. The hints and inuendo have become broader and no longer easily dismissed as taken out of context. They aren't playing the race card; they're playing the whole deck.

Yesterday Palin worked a crowd in Clearwater Florida into a frenzy, accusing Obama of being a terrorist and unamerican. "He's not like us white people," was her subtext. It worked:

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

[snip]

Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

In the middle of an economic crisis the likes of which very few of us have ever seen this is their chosen strategy? When members of his own campaign write columns like Bobby May's that go unrepudiated; when his own running mate encourages a mob mentality that seems all too similar to a Klan Rally; when op-ed columnists are suggesting better ways for him to throw race into this toxic mess and he accepts their recommendations graciously, McCain makes a mockery of his "Country First" slogan.

To quote, of all people, Fred Thompson as Admiral Painter in The Hunt For Red October, "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."

McCain has given his permission for race hatred to be unleashed. He has cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war. We knew it was coming. We could see it a mile away. Nonetheless, it is now a reality and their snarls and barks signal a conflagration that may, after this election is over, leave us nothing but cinders.

addendum: Lest you merely peruse this little tirade of mine and ignore the comments you are missing something special. Blaize has taken my Julius Caesar quote and tossed off an impromtu dissertation that demands your attention. I find it both inspiring and depressing.