Fear Not--McCain Supporters

[Ol JohnnyBoy]

This thing is getting down right comical. It seems as if some J Mac supporters are coming unglued. You all have to keep your people together in this thing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081010/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_angry_crowds

McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd



By PHILIP ELLIOTT and BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writers 22 minutes ago

[/align][/align]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."


[/align]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.
___

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[James B]

We have been fighting the terrorist for years now they want to elect one for president. McCain better get on the stick and clue the folks in.

[Fieldmouse]

Hey Ol johnnyboy, McCain was not the pick of the Republican faithful ie the conservatives. However because of open party voting, we got stuck with him. What you are seeing is frustration from the conservative wing because McCain has been repeatedly do the very thing that made him not our choice.

[Arthur P]

Today, the REAL McCain, the honest and honorable man I liked and admired in 2000, emerged for a brief instant. It's a real shame he's surrounded himself with such perverse people on his campaign staff and has been letting them lead him around by the nose. I really believe he's hated what his operatives have been up to and I'm glad he's finally taking control back. It's too late to save his candidacy, I'm afraid, but he's showing his maverick side at last, doing what's right instead of what the radical right wants. He regained a touch of the respect I used to have for him.

[the critter]

wow, he says something mature and truthful and gets boo'ed, go figure

[F3d]

lol Does McCain even know what his campaign is running? What's up with those stupid Ayers ads?

I gotta say Obama was right about one thing: McCain is erratic.

[Cougar Mag]

ORIGINAL: Arthur P

Today, the REAL McCain, the honest and honorable man I liked and admired in 2000, emerged for a brief instant. It's a real shame he's surrounded himself with such perverse people on his campaign staff and has been letting them lead him around by the nose. I really believe he's hated what his operatives have been up to and I'm glad he's finally taking control back. It's too late to save his candidacy, I'm afraid, but he's showing his maverick side at last, doing what's right instead of what the radical right wants. He regained a touch of the respect I used to have for him.

X2. In all honesty these 2 candidates for president are the best choices we have had in 8 years.

[younggun308]

Whoever chants "kill him", and saying Obama is a Muslim, is really someone I have trouble not getting a little ticked off at sometimes, it's quite pointless.

Of all the things to get mad at Obama about, or to not vote for him, "Muslim"???? Give mea break, I think this actually might have helped McCain's campaign more than it hurt him, if the independents get a look at it.

[boysda]

i agreee. i saw today the mccain i've liked and admired most of his political career.

his campaign is in desperate shape. i honestly think if mccain changed his strategy and told the american people that:
a) ob's not a muslim terrorist,and he loves america as much as i do,so get off that,
b) we all want what's best for the U.S., we just disagree on how to get there,
c) my handlers and consultants want me to engage in the politicis of division. i'm firing them today,
d) i despise the politics of hate...heretofor this wil be a discussion of the issues.
e) only through true bipartisanship will we lift our nation out of the morass we are stuck in. that's why, if elected, i would intend and pledge to offer senator Obama a position in my cabinet;

i think the gap on the polls would be cut in half overnight. but alas i suspect this won't happen.

a candidate has to be comfortable in his skin to connect to voters. in an age of blow-dried, controlled, prepped and scripted candidates, voters crave authenticty, and it is generally the candidates who manage to be authentic and true to themselves that over-match their peers.

john mccain has not been comfortablein the final stretch of this campaign, and this has come across in his body language and in the debates. i think it's because he's not comfortable with himself as the personification of his campaign, and the direction that several levels of that campain have taken. the same folks who nuked him in south carolina in 2000 are the guys running his show now.

he is and always has been an honorable, decent man. the old, authentic john mccain needs to reach out and connect to voters, and quickly, or this election will be a blow out.

[bergall]

ORIGINAL: boysda

i agreee. i saw today the mccain i've liked and admired most of his political career.

his campaign is in desperate shape. i honestly think if mccain changed his strategy and told the american people that:
a) ob's not a muslim terrorist,and he loves america as much as i do,so get off that,
b) we all want what's best for the U.S., we just disagree on how to get there,
c) my handlers and consultants want me to engage in the politicis of division. i'm firing them today,
d) i despise the politics of hate...heretofor this wil be a discussion of the issues.
e) only through true bipartisanship will we lift our nation out of the morass we are stuck in. that's why, if elected, i would intend and pledge to offer senator Obama a position in my cabinet;

i think the gap on the polls would be cut in half overnight. but alas i suspect this won't happen.

a candidate has to be comfortable in his skin to connect to voters. in an age of blow-dried, controlled, prepped and scripted candidates, voters crave authenticty, and it is generally the candidates who manage to be authentic and true to themselves that over-match their peers.

john mccain has not been comfortablein the final stretch of this campaign, and this has come across in his body language and in the debates. i think it's because he's not comfortable with himself as the personification of his campaign, and the direction that several levels of that campain have taken. the same folks who nuked him in south carolina in 2000 are the guys running his show now.

he is and always has been an honorable, decent man. the old, authentic john mccain needs to reach out and connect to voters, and quickly, or this election will be a blow out.

:Your approach is utopian to say the least. The time to 'argue the issues' is over....Obama's minions have completely discounted any pertinent discussion of issues as they are steadfastly fixed on what they THINK they're gonna get from the goobs, rather than what they're GONNA get from the goobs; it's a parasitic mentality. Considering that Obammy's only got negatives, I see no problems discussing them and taking political advantage from them.

I also think that while being bipartisan in practice is a good thing, there are snakes and there are doves.
Obama is a snake and not taken to bipartisanship. I do not understand why McCain would EVER offer this
snake a cabinet position...he's got nothing to offer and has shown himself to be duplicitous to McCain's
efforts in the past.

I believe McCain is an honorable person. You can see the earnestness with which he advances his opinions. The insinuation that he's not comfortable in his own skin is ridiculous. The problem is that when a charlatan promises that which he can not deliver, it's a tall order to stand up to that 'gimme' attitude.
I do not see Obammy as an honorable person....his personal associations preclude any semblance of 'honor'; maybe if there were just a couple bad guys in his past it could be overlooked as 'youthful exhuberance' but with a new skunk-bag crawling out from under a different rock every week, and with all the ROTTEN democrat schemes NOT being discussed, I cannot vote for him in good conscience and as a matter of personal pride.

Finally, I believe McCain is proud of his country and of being an American. Obama is NOT. He will take pride in the 3rd world craphole he'd turn this country into. Then he'd be a patriot in a socialist, nanny state where the rich are robbed and the poor as subsidized. Not a pretty picture....