Republicans Behaving Badly

It has been widely noted in some recent McCain rallies that people in the audience are exhibiting far more passion than he is. That's a mixed blessing: it's great that they're passionate, but terrible that he's not. However, the audiences went over the line when they called Obama a terrorist and shouted to kill him. The first charge is wrong and the second simply vile. That should be reason enough to cease and desist, but for those who only respond on pragmatic grounds, let's add that it's incredibly stupid. The mainstream media will pick it up and repeat it endlessly, and it gives our political opponents the chance to brand us in all sorts of unfavorable ways. They can do that anyway, but now we're giving them ammunition! Very stupid - in addition to being vile.

Even worse, albeit in a different way, is the reaction we've seen on a couple of conservative websites. McCain has taken his audiences to task over the comments above, as well as when he corrected a befuddled supporter who claimed that Obama is an Arab. Incredibly, these websites have reacted by taking McCain to task for dampening his supporters' enthusiasm. Now, if they were pointing to something else McCain had done to scold his supporters, they might have a point. But as far as we can tell, the websites are referring to the comments discussed above. If so, then their remarks are disappointing, to say the least. Is "the team" so dear and goodness so worthless that you'd prefer to slander Obama and criticize McCain than correct the base?

There are plenty of good reasons to prefer McCain to Obama (scan through earlier posts on this blog, for starters), so even ignoring issues of propriety, there's no need to use such lowbrow techniques. And if those good reasons don't exist, then why vote for him at all?