The book I wrote earlier this year — Great American Hypocrites:  Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics — has now been released in its paperback edition, which you can find here at Amazon or at any local bookstore.  The book details the personality-based, substance-free (and issue-obfuscating) campaign tactics which Republicans have used since 1980 to win national elections — building manipulative personality cults around their leaders while simultaneously destroying the Democratic candidate with character smears — and describes, I believe, precisely the tactics on which the McCain campaign has come to rely with increasing desperation, and the reasons why they must:

For the past three decades, American politics has been driven by a bizarre anomaly. Polls continuously show that on almost every issue, Americans vastly prefer the policies of the Democratic Party to those of the Republican Party. Yet during that time, the Republicans have won the majority of elections. This book examines how and why that has happened.

The most important factor, by far, is that the Republican Party employs the same set of personality smears and mythical, psychological, and cultural images to win elections… .

The Republican Party of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater will use these same personality-based themes in the 2008 election, because it is all they know and, more important, because nothing has stopped it yet.  Their actual platform of more Middle East militarism and domestic policies designed to further widen America’s rich-poor gap is, as every poll shows, deeply unpopular. A mid-2007 Rasmussen Reports Poll revealed just how disadvantaged Republicans are when it comes to actual issues and substance, rather than personality smears:

Democrats are currently trusted more than Republicans on all ten issues measured in Rasmussen Reports tracking surveys. Democrats even have slight advantages on National Security and Taxes, two issues “owned” by Republicans during the generation since Ronald Reagan took office… .

Rasmussen Reports monthly surveys have shown a sharp decline in the number of Americans considering themselves Republicans over the past eight months.

A New York Times/CBS poll released in mid-December 2007, as the primary presidential season intensified, revealed that Americans have an overwhelmingly unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party (33–59 percent), while their opinion of Democrats is favorable (48–44 percent) — a bulging 15-point advantage for Democrats. In early 2008, this mountain of anti-GOP polling data led conservative David Brooks, in the New York Times, to conclude: “The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy, and Iraq by double-digit margins.”

Worse still for Republicans, they are burdened with the record and reputation of one of the most widely despised presidents in American history and by the country’s most disastrous war. Trying to win this election with cultural, psychological, sexual, and gender-based smears and John Wayne mythology is their only option, and they will pursue it vigorously and with glee. They always do.

The final chapter describes how these personality-driven tactics will be applied specifically to inflate John McCain into “the paragon of exactly those virtues he most lacks: the apolitical, independent-minded, moderate maverick who rejects elitist values and is an honor-bound, truth-telling man of the people, pursuing his principles even when doing so comes at a great political cost.”  And the central theme of the book examines how these tactics can be undermined and ultimately destroyed.  The Amazon page contains numerous excerpts of reviews of the book.

* * * * * 

For those who missed them, I wrote an unusually large number of posts yesterday, all regarding the campaign:

• this post, documenting the McCain campaign’s blatant lies — the only accurate descriptive phrase there is — regarding the findings of the Troopergate report;
•  
• this post, marveling at Bill Kristol’s stinging attack on the McCain campaign for its reliance on tactics which Kristol himself has spent weeks advocating;
•  
• this post, examining the still-increasingly destructive rhetoric coming from the McCain campaign towards Obama and the attempts by some in the media to dismiss, rationalize and even justify it; and,
•  
• this post, chronicling the burgeoning and moving friendship between Politico writers and one of Karl Rove’s chief hatchet men, Tim Griffin, and how that relationship typifies Beltway campaign reporting.

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

It’s simply not possible to lie more deliberately or flagrantly than this:

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis on Fox News this morning, when asked by Chris Wallace about the Troopergate report issued on Friday:

The reality is there was absolutely no wrongdoing found in the report — 1,000 pages — an enormous waste of time — and the best they could come up with was:   no violations of any kinds of laws or ethics rules.

From the Report — the very first finding — page 8 (.pdf):

There’s no lie too brazen.  There’s not a modicum of personal responsibility or acknowledgment of wrongdoing.   Even bipartisan, unanimous investigations that result in adverse findings of wrongdoing are smeared and dismissed away (Davis:  ”kangaroo court” — “big public circus” — ”this now drops dead and there’ll be no follow-up at all”).  Chris Wallace, who is actually more decent as an interviewer than most of his colleagues, interrupted and confronted Davis with his lie — “No, it said she violated the state Ethics laws” — but Davis just persisted as brazenly as before with the lie.  That’s a perfect snapshot for what we’ve had the last eight years.

UPDATE:  As NYtoLA points out, the campaign’s response not only relies upon a blatant lie about what the report concludes, but is also incoherent and internally contradictory:

What shocks me about the McCain-Palin campaign’s reaction to this report is how illogical they have been in their response. On the one hand, they claim that the report shows she did nothing wrong; therefore, they argue, she is totally off the hook. But on the other hand, they claim that the report’s conclusions are invalid because the investigation was too tainted by partisanship. One wants to stand on top of a tall object with a megaphone, yelling, “What the hell are you talking about!? THIS MAKES NO SENSE!”

And, as Jim White notes, Palin has been telling the same lie about the Report’s conclusions.  It’s one thing to dispute the Report’s findings; that’s within their prerogative.  But outright lying about what the Report actually concluded shouldn’t be.  Yet that’s exactly what they’re doing — deliberately and as clearly as can be.

UPDATE II:  Here’s what Sarah Palin said today on a conference call with Alaskan reporters about the Troopergate report; her lying is so brazen that it’s nothing short of despicable (first ellipses in original):

Palin:  Let me talk a little bit about the Tasergate issue if you guys would let me and, Meg, you want me to just jump right on in there?

Stapleton: Sure governor, go ahead.

Palin: OK cool.

Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that… .He did what any – I think — any rational person would do so again, nothing to apologize there with Todd’s actions and again very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing.

The Report explicitly found that she “abused her power” by “violating” an Alaskan ethical statute — a law — and she’s stating that the Report “cleared her of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity.” Again, if she wants to dispute or disagree with the Report’s conclusions, that’s her right.  But what she said here is just a bald-faced lie about what the Report says.  There’s just no other way to describe that.  She really is out-Chenying Dick Cheney.

UPDATE III:  Credit where it’s due — in this case, to ABC News’ Jake Tapper:

Palin Makes Troopergate Assertions that Are Flatly False

On Saturday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin twice spoke to reporters about the so-called “Troopergate” scandal and the investigative report on whether she had abused her power … . “Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing,” Palin said, “any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.”

That’s just not the case.

One can make the argument, as Palin and her allies have tried to do, that this investigation — launched by a bipartisan Republican-controlled legislative body — was somehow a partisan Democratic witch hunt, but one cannot honestly make the argument that the report concluded that Palin was “cleared of any legal wrongdoing” or “any hint of unethical activity” … . When Palin first commented on the report she parsed… . But now Palin has moved on from parsing to assertions that are not true.

Tapper cites several other instances where Palin made clearly false statements about the Report’s findings.  Even good reporters typically avoid stating that high political officials have made “flatly false” statements, even when they clearly have.  But in this case, Palin’s lies are so glaring that nothing else will do.  Kudos to Tapper for avoiding that convention here.

On October 5, Bill Kristol used his New York Times column to describe his telephone interview with Sarah Palin, during which they both agreed that the McCain/Palin campaign must attack Obama harder on his “associations,” particularly with Bill Ayers. He ended his column this way:

I asked at the end of our conversation whether Palin, fresh off her own debate, had any advice for McCain… . “Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun. And Senator McCain can do the same.” She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ”

And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best.

On October 7, Kristol went on Fox News and urged McCain to use Bill Ayers to attack Obama in the debate:

I disagree with all of the advice that McCain is getting… . You have to talk endlessly about the economy. These attacks on Obama on Bill Ayers and possibly Reverend Wright don’t matter. I don’t agree with that. … McCain has got to tie the economic crisis to Obama’s character and judgment and say:  ”who do you want in charge for four difficult years, who is up to the job — is this inexperienced, liberal Democrat who has hung out with some pretty unsavory characters, is he the guy who you want him to run the country?” I think that’s got to be the core of McCain’s message tonight.

Though McCain didn’t bring it up in the debate, since then, the campaign has followed Kristol’s advice, talking about Ayers more than any other single topic.  But now that it is conclusively clear that these attacks are failing — that they are actually backfiring and making Obama more popular and McCain and Palin more unpopular — Kristol went on Fox News this morning and attacked the McCain campaign for running what he called a “stupid campaign” and “a pathetic campaign” because the attacks ”haven’t worked” and they’re “doing things that don’t work and they keep doing them” — without ever bothering to mention that he, Kristol, just last week, was one of the loudest and most vocal advocates for relying on these character attacks against Obama:

That’s typical Bill Kristol — not only chronically wrong about everything, but far worse, completely incapable of acknowledging mistakes.  He just suppresses them, pretends they don’t exist, and in that regard is the perfect face for the right-wing movement that is dying a painful, harsh and profoundly well-deserved death in front of everyone’s eyes.  

What we’re seeing in this video is just the start of the angry recriminations in this movement as they seek to blame each other for what has happened.  As John Cole puts it:  “The coming circular firing squad is going to be fun.”  It’s also likely to be protracted, bitter and brutal.  Looking around at the utter destruction they’ve sown — to our Constitution, to our economy, to our standing in the world, and to multiple other countries — that is the only just outcome.

(updated below - Update II)

In the post below, I referenced an angry defense of the McCain/Palin campaign from Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who mocked accusations that the McCain campaign was exploiting racist themes as nothing more than the by-product of “the outrage industry, ever on the lookout for any sign of racism and quick to pounce even when it’s not there.”  To do so, Martin dismissed a truly vile and overtly racist newspaper article (.pdf) written by Bobby May — McCain’s County Chairman in Buchanan County, Virginia and former GOP County Treasurer — as nothing more than “one isolated piece from a low-level party activist in a rural paper.”

Today, Time’s Karen Tumulty reports on what she heard after being invited by the McCain campaign to observe its “ground game” in Southern Virginia.  Tumulty reports on a speech she heard delivered to gathered McCain volunteers by the Chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, Jeffrey M. Frederick — no “low-level party activist” he:

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: “Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” he said. “That is scary.”

After noting that this is “not exactly true,” Tumulty described how that accusation was nonetheless “enough to get the volunteers stoked”:

“And he won’t salute the flag,” one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, “We don’t even know where Senator Obama was really born.” Actually, we do; it’s Hawaii.

This is why it is so disgraceful for reporters and pundits to minimize and dismiss what the McCain/Palin campaign, and Republicans generally, have been doing as they become increasingly desperate.  Here is the top Republican official for the State of Virginia comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden and provoking claims that he hates the flag and isn’t really even American.  The raw tribalism and resentments that are being stoked here, and the pure hatred against Obama based on his Terroristic Foreignness, is unprecedentedly ugly and dangerous, and reporters who dismiss and minimize it all through false equivalencies and other justifications are doing nothing less than aiding and abetting it.

UPDATE:  Virginia blogger Lowell Feld has more on this, noting:  ”this wasn’t some offhand remark by Frederick; he said it knowing that a reporter from TIME MAGAZINE was in the room taking notes for a story! Imagine what he says when the media isn’t present?!?”

UPDATE II:  Ezra Klein points to this Marc Ambinder post, in which Ambinder writes:  ”Ron Brownstein, our in-house Atlantic Media political safe, pens a balanced column on health care that neither campaign will like (which is why it’s worth pointing to)!” (emphasis added).  It’s not “worth pointing to” because it’s true or informative, but because it’s “balanced” — meaning both sides will hate it equally — and, therefore, for that reason alone, it must be worthwhile, regardless of whether the “balance” is warranted by the truth.  

Ezra says:  ”Even after a couple of years as a professional journalist, I still find that mindset very weird.”  “Very weird” is definitely one way to describe it, but what it really is more than anything else is the core sickness of modern journalism (hence:  the McCain campaign is stoking tribal hatred and mass incendiary resentments toward Obama but Republicans say that Democrats do it, too).  NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen is on a mad Twitter roll, collecting multiple examples of this corrupt form of GOP-aiding “journalism” — what he calls “both sides bliss” — from the last 24 hours alone.

(updated below)

Tim Griffin has long been one of Karl Rove’s closest “protégés” and has been at the epicenter of many of the most significant episodes of Republican sleaze over the last decade — in particular, he has been a vital tool in the naked politicization of our justice system.  Lately, Griffin’s relationship with Politico and its McCain campaign reporter, Jonathan Martin, has grown in numerous ways, and the benefits for both are becoming increasingly apparent, in the standard tawdry ways that typify how our press corps functions. 

In the mid-1990s, Griffin worked with the Special Prosecutor investigating HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros’s relationship with his mistress.  In 1999, he joined the Bush campaign to oversee “opposition research” and then became legal advisor to the “Bush-Cheney 2000 Florida Recount Team.”  Griffin served again as director of opposition research for the Bush/Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, and — as Greg Palast has exhaustively documented — spearheaded efforts to prevent minorities and poor voters from voting in 2004, especially in Florida.  In 2005, Griffin became Karl Rove’s top aide in the White House, and then found himself in the middle of the U.S. Attorney scandal when Rove engineered the forced resignation of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, to be replaced by … Tim Griffin, who then oversaw all federal investigations and prosecutions for the entire state of Arkansas.  

Outrage from Arkansas’ two Senators over Rove’s hand-picking of such a blatant partisan operative to serve as U.S. Attorney — and the abuse by Alberto Gonzales of a provision of the Patriot Act allowing interim appointments of U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation in order to plant Griffin in that position — resulted in Griffin’s forced resignation months later, just as John Conyers was investigating Griffin’s role in the voter-suppression schemes.  Earlier this year, Griffin advised Fred Thompson’s campaign and, after reports that he would oversee “research” for the McCain campaign, Griffin announced he was instead opening his own ”public affairs” (i.e., lobbying) firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, and last month began writing his own political blog — ”The Griffin Room.”  So that’s Tim Griffin.

* * * * * * 

When Griffin began his blog last month, The Politico’s Jonathan Martin announced its debut and linked to it.  Griffin, in turn, posted a thanks to Martin on his blog, along with a playful photograph of Martin eating a pork chop, and added this thought:  ”JMart tells me he is a fan of Doe’s. We hope to get him a porterhouse soon with ‘celebrity’ Mike Allen in tow. TG.”

Griffin was then invited by Politico to participate in online panel discussions of the presidential campaign, where he contributes multiple posts opining on McCain and Obama (and Griffin then urges his blog readers to read Politico).  On his own blog, Griffin excitedly noted that he and Martin were on the same page with their thoughts about the first debate.

Earlier this month, Martin and Politico’s Mike Allen were scheduled to appear at the Clinton School in Little Rock the night following the Vice Presidential debate, and Griffin generously twice promoted their appearance on his blog (“two of the best in the business” — “Politico’s top journalists”), noting that ”Martin and Allen are both known to be fans of Little Rock and especially the steaks at Doe’s.”  Following the event, Griffin hosted Allen and Martin for a fun-filled boys’ Friday night out in Little Rock, and afterwards described just some of the festivities in detail on his blog:

Recap of a Friday to Remember

As many of you know, Politico’s Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service Friday. After speaking to a packed house and being treated like royalty by the gracious Dean Skip Rutherford, Mike, Jonathan and I met up with KATV Channel 7’s News Director Randy Dixon. Randy showed us all around the studio and shared several stories of his days covering the Clinton campaign in 1992… .

On the way out of KATV, they got a good glimpse of the Rose Law Firm. They were amused to learn that the Rose Law Firm has a pool in the basement.

Then, it was off to get some BBQ. Of course, I told Mike and Jonathan that BBQ meant one place: Whole Hog. Nothing like it. I ate a little much—a whole rack of ribs. I went with the number 3 sauce (a little spicy), stripped some meat from the ribs and put it on an bun that I purchased extra, and, of course, a big forkful of cole slaw on the bun. Now that’s what pulled pork should always be—rib meat pulled off the bone and put on a bun. Mike and Jonathan went with ribs as well. Mike thought a half rack was enough. It wasn’t, so he went back for another.

After eating way too much, we made our way through the Heights, by the Governor’s Mansion, by Central High and past the Old State House for a view of one of the best examples of Greek Revival architecture in America.

I told Mike and Jonathan that as high school football fans, they would love Friday night Drivetime Sports with Randy Rainwater because it is focused on high school football. They did. They enjoyed hearing the analysis of football in Junction City, Bearden, Searcy, etc. It made them want a Sonic Blast.

Did I mention that we ate a lot while they were here? As we headed downtown near the Capitol, I drove them up 3rd Street en route to Doe’s for a couple more examples of local Greek Revival architecture. They were fascinated to learn that the area around Doe’s was a hot place to live shortly after the Civil War.

We were due at Doe’s at 6 and made it. We were joined by Dean Skip Rutherford and family as well as David Sanders. We ate lots of tamales, salad and porterhouse steaks, medium rare. There was no room for dessert.

Mike and Jonathan, come back and see us anytime. I should be rested by then and ready to eat.

TG

A few days later, Martin wrote a widely-cited post at Politico vigorously — even angrily — defending John McCain from accusations that the McCain/Palin campaign has been exploiting racist resentment.  Sounding like Rush Limbaugh (or Karl Rove), Martin railed against what he called the “outrage industry, ever on the lookout for any sign of racism and quick to pounce even when it’s not there,” and repeatedly lamented on McCain’s behalf that he’s in “in a no-win position.”  [Martin was among those who attended the cozy weekend at the McCain compound in Sedona in March and caused Megan McCain so memorably to gush:  ”It was really fun to kind of see big journalist figures like Holly Bailey swinging on the tire swing, and Jon Martin helping my dad grill ribs … The guys from the Politico brought [my mom, Cindy] flowers which I still think is the most adorable thing ever, so thank you, I thought it was like so cute that they decided to bring my mom flowers … “].

Yesterday, Griffin — unintentionally displaying the oozing politicization of our federal justice system which he helped to implement — wrote a post recommending that John McCain, at the next debate, call for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to criminally investigate the financial crisis, to include a focus on every GOP bogeyman:  Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad, ”the role of former Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines in the collapse of Fannie Mae,” and ACORN:  ”The Special Prosecutor could work together with the federal prosecutor prosecuting ACORN under the RICO law as a criminal enterprise if that in fact occurs as some have suggested.”  

With no hint of irony at all, Karl Rove’s top hatchet man actually wrote this:

If McCain were to make such a proposal, it would demonstrate that he is a man of action, not just words.

It would demonstrate that he understands someone must be held accountable for the mortgage meltdown if criminal laws were broken. (I understand that greed in and of itself is not criminal.)

It would demonstrate that we are a nation of laws, even for the wealthy and well connected.

And ask Sen. Obama to join him in this proposal. He won’t… . A Special Prosecutor. For action. For accountability. For confidence.

Pardon me, but I just have to repeat that.  From Karl Rove’s top disciple, former key White House aide, the man at the center of some of the tawdriest abuses of our justice system over the last decade, including the U.S. attorney scandal:  ”It would demonstrate that we are a nation of laws, even for the wealthy and well connected.”

A mere five hours after Griffin posted that, Martin went to Politico and dutifully trumpeted Griffin’s call for a Special Prosecutor as though it were some serious and newsworthy event:  ”Griffin urges McCain to call for special prosecutor.”  Martin described Griffin’s proposal without a word of critical comment — “Griffin contends McCain could appeal to both the GOP base and swing voters, both of whom are taking major hits in the market right now” — and then proceeded to quote large parts of Griffin’s post.  Three hours later, Griffin proudly noted:  ”Politico’s Jonathan Martin Picks Up Post on Special Prosecutor.” 

Martin and Griffin seem to be really good friends, and that’s nice.  Spending your nights socializing with the most vicious GOP operatives or your weekends cooking with John McCain and giving flowers to his wife won’t have any impact at all on your ability to cover what they’re doing or investigating and skeptically scrutinizing their claims.

* * * * * *

Yesterday, Digby wrote about the ongoing reverence for Karl Rove from our political and media establishment and, quoting a great new piece by Matt Taibbi on that topic, noted that Rove’s popularity among the media is not in spite of his flagrant contempt for law, ethics and rules, but due precisely to it:

Because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can’t bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. 

That echoes what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen observed last year about the media’s ongoing reverence for Rove himself and his band of disciples — that the modern journalist, above all else, reveres and desperately wants to be close to the ”unprincipled winner”: those who engage in bad acts, ones which everyone knows are bad, and — most importantly of all — gets away with it through flagrant indifference to law and rules:

Savviness! Deep down, that’s what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in— their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it’s better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere or humane.

Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.) Savviness—that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political—is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain.… What is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Everyone knows that the press admires an unprincipled winner.

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which “journalists” — and especially those who, like Martin, cover campaigns — identify with, socialize with, and revere the very operatives whose purpose is to manipulate and deceive them.  It’s hardly possible to go any lower or get any sleazier than Tim Griffin — or Karl Rove.  But not in the eyes of our intrepid journalists.  Being close to them, spending the night shoving your face full of ribs while being feted by them, is as good as it gets —- even better than doing that with John McCain on his ranch.  Unsurprisingly, the great speech by McClatchy’s John Walcott contains exactly the description of this sickness:

Why, in a nutshell, was our reporting different [in the run-up to the attack on Iraq] from so much other reporting? One important reason was that we sought out the dissidents, and we listened to them, instead of serving as stenographers to high-ranking officials and Iraqi exiles. I’m afraid that much the same thing may have happened on Wall Street. Power and money and celebrity, in other words, can blind you. Somehow, the idea has taken hold in Washington journalism that the value of a source is directly proportional to his or her rank, when in my experience the relationship is more often inverse.

That brings up a larger point, and one that I think is another part of what went wrong back in 2002, and what may have gone wrong on Wall Street. Instead of being members of the Fourth Estate, too many Washington reporters have been itching to move up an estate or two, to become part of the Establishment or share in the good times.

But it’s no fun spending Friday night in Little Rock with some low-level nobody dissident.  Tim Griffin sits at the right hand of Karl Rove and has been a key figure in countless dirty GOP scandals over the last decade, and that makes Jonathan Martin feel really special to be close to that, praised by it, friendly with it.

UPDATE:  Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong today cites a mindlessly subservient article regarding McCain’s new economic proposals jointly regurgitated by the aforementioned Martin and Allen and writes:  ”the media death spiral watch continues, led by the Politico” (h/t Atrios).

Michael Crowley illustrates, yet again, why The New Republic is beloved by the Right — eagerly currying favor with the Right is the magazine’s overarching, obsequious purpose — and has otherwise (with some rare exceptions) written itself into utter irrelevancy.  Crowley denies that the ugly, anti-Obama lynch mob rage characterizing McCain/Palin rallies is “unique” or “of alarming proportion,” and instead argues that Democrats are being hypocrites by objecting, because some people on the left also said bad things about George Bush 2004:

Is the GOP Fury So Unique?

My friends and fellow prisoners, time for some straight talk: Politico has a good story today about Republican rage at the notion of an Obama presidency … . This is all nasty stuff.  is it really unprecedented? A pitchfork rebellion of alarming proportions? I’m not so sure. Around this time four years ago Democrats raged furiously against an illegitimate, lying “war criminal.” Indeed some even called Bush a terrorist.

Yes, there’s probably a nativist strain here that makes this uglier than anything we saw in ‘04… . But I haven’t seen many examples of overt racism beyond the smears we’ve seen for months. (Indeed as Noam notes below, race has been somewhat surprisingly absent from ths campaign so far.)

Unfortunately, to some degree this seems to be what happens in American politics nowadays when one side is losing. No one wants to accept the possibility that they’ve been outplayed fair and square.

Obviously, every political movement — every group of human beings — will attract some crazed, imbalanced individuals.  If all that were happening in this election were a few stray comments from the crowd or some anonymous Internet comments that were vicious or even overtly racist and violent, then Crowley’s point that there’s nothing unusual or particularly significant would at least be reasonable.   

But as anyone with eyes can see, that’s not what is happening — not even close.  Crowley’s characteristic TNR need to receive “even-liberal-TNR-admits” praise from the Right (and the head pats are piling up already) leads him to assert some plainly false and just morally perverse equivalencies. 

The mass accusations of “terrorist” and “Arab traitor” against Obama didn’t just get randomly blurted out by a few hard-core, isolated ideologues.  Rather, that is exactly the message being spewed systematically from McCain and Palin themselves (“pallin’ around with terrorists”), their parade of ads, and the coordinated efforts of opinion-leaders on the Right.  Even veteran campaign reporters for whom Balance is a religion have been acknowledging that the McCain/Palin rallies are unique in their mass-crowd vitriol and intense rage. 

Can Crowley point to a single statement or ad from John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, or a single Kerry/Edwards rally, that is remotely comparable to any of this?  He doesn’t even bother to try, because in TNR World, it is an article of faith that “The Left” is always (at least) as bad as The Right — if one side does X, then it is necessarily true that the other side does it, too — and simply asserting an equivalency in each case is sufficient to achieve the purpose (to show “Balance” and attract the Right’s praise) and requires no evidence.

Much more revealingly, note that Crowley doesn’t even pretend to assess the validity or truth of the accusation he’s equating.  By 2004, George Bush (with TNR cheering him every step of the way) had attacked, invaded and virtually obliterated another country that hadn’t attacked us and couldn’t attack us, killing tens of thousands of innocent people (at least), all based on false pretenses.  He had locked up hundreds of people — including U.S. citizens on U.S. soil — and asserted the right to keep them in cages indefinitely without bothering to charge them or afford any process for contesting the accusations. 

We were subjecting helpless detainees, many of whom were innocent, to hideous treatment at Guantanamo, and photographs had surfaced showing that the U.S. military was imposing the most grotesque torture on prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  If those aren’t war crimes, what is?  If that doesn’t make George Bush a “war criminal,” what would?  Crowley might want to read this:

The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Given those facts, for Crowely to assert an equivalency between claims that George Bush is a “war criminal” or even a “terrorist” with the bile being spewed toward Barack Obama is perverse in the extreme.  But to Crowley, the conclusions of Gen. Taguba (“there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes”) is the equivalent of the lynch mob’s crusade against Obama because they both contain mean and aggressive accusations, so what’s the difference?

It’s certainly reasonable to object to the term “terrorist” as excessive or incendiary rhetoric when applied to Bush (particularly since that term is nothing more than a political tool and has no real, discernible meaning), but Crowley’s eagerness to equate accusations made against Obama with ones made against George Bush without any regard whatsoever to whether the accusations are true vividly illustrates the core sickness of the modern Beltway journalist:  namely, that balance renders truth irrelevant, and the desire to ingratiate oneself to the establishment outweighs all.  

Crowley — and all of his journalistic comrades — should immediately read the extraordinarily incisive speech given this week by McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief John Walcott when he accepted the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, an award received for McClatchy’s skeptical and aggressive investigative reporting scrutinizing the Bush administration’s pre-war Iraq claims (claims which TNR mindlessly ingested and vocally regurgitated):

Instead of being members of the Fourth Estate, too many Washington reporters have been itching to move up an estate or two, to become part of the Establishment or share in the good times. I.F. Stone, on the other hand, knew well that reporters, by definition, are outsiders. After Stone died, Pat Oliphant drew a marvelous cartoon of him standing at the gates of heaven, holding a pencil and a notebook. Like all great political cartoons, it says more than words ever could. St. Peter is on the phone to a Higher Authority, and he’s saying: “Yes, that I.F. Stone, Sir. He says he doesn’t want to come in — he’d rather hang around out here, and keep things honest.”

Being an outsider, a gadfly, a muckracker, isn’t always as much fun as being an insider, a celebrity journalist on TV and the lecture circuit. Worse, in these troubled economic times for the news media, it makes enemies, sometimes powerful ones, and it can offend readers, advertisers — and, as conditions in our business continue to worsen — potential employers in public relations and other industries… .

Relying on The Times, or McClatchy or any other news source, for all the truth is dumb, but it’s infinitely preferable to the pernicious philosophical notions that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is relative, or that, as some journalists seem to believe, it can be found midway between the two opposing poles of any argument… .

Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and abolition, or between segregation and civil rights, or between communism and democracy? If you quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Winston Churchill, in other words, must you then give equal time and credence to Hitler and Joseph Goebbels? If you write an article that’s critical of John McCain, are you then obligated to devote an identical number of words to criticism of Barack Obama, and vice versa?  

I’m not one who believes — even with an election less than 30 days away — that liberal pundits should avoid making points that can be used by “the other side.”  Political writers aren’t and shouldn’t be campaign operatives, and their primary obligation should be to write the truth as they see it, even if that truth undermines “their side.”  

Crowley’s crime here isn’t that he undermined a pro-Obama talking point.  It’s that he reflexively asserted equivalencies where there plainly are none because that’s how journalists like him show how Fair, Objective and Reasonable they are (some people on the Left called Bush a terrorist so that makes these coordinated McCain/Palin Munich beer hall rallies unnotable).  Worst of all, he equated the two without even pretending to consider whether the two things he was equating were true or false.  That is why Crowley’s defense of the McCain mobs as nothing unusual is so typical, and so illustrative of the core corruption of our journalistic class.  The two sides are always the same, even when they’re not.

* * * * * * *

I was really sorry to read that Dean Barnett — formerly of Hugh Hewitt’s blog and now a Contributor at The Weekly Standard — is in ICU battling his latest and, by all appearances, most serious attack yet of cystic fibrosis.  Dean is one of those very rare advocates on the Right who, despite embracing deeply misguided political views, is almost uniformly honest in his writing and quite amiable in his personal interaction.  I developed somewhat of a friendship with Dean over the last couple of years by e-mail and appeared with him a few times when he guest-hosted The Hugh Hewitt Show, where we argued vigorously though constructively — the kind of political arguments I wish were more possible.   And I particularly respect the courageous way he talks candidly about his battles with cystic fibrosis, a truly awful and almost invariably fatal disease for which there is no cure.

Dean gave an interview just a few days ago to Pundit Fight, where he talked about numerous topics, including the exchanges he and I had.  Whatever you personally do to send someone best wishes would be well-deserved in Dean’s case.

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)

As the Right increasingly (a) demands to hear more about Bill Ayers and Obama The Communist/Muslim Terrorist and (b) proclaims Sarah Palin to be the darling of the Regular American and the new right-wing superstar — claims that are converging in the traveling lynch mob tour known as the “McCain/Palin campaign” — two new polls, one from Newsweek and one from Fox (.pdf), conclusively demonstrate how out-of-touch and fringe the Right has become.   Both polls show that as the Right reveals its true Ayers-driven face to the nation, (a) Obama’s popularity holds steady while McCain and Palin’s plummets, and (b) Sarah Palin is a massive liability for the McCain campaign.  

The Newsweek poll shows Obama/Biden with a lead of 11 points (up from 4 points a month ago) and Fox shows Obama/Biden with a 7-point lead (they had McCain winning by 3 a month ago), but in terms of seeing what the right-wing movement in this country has become, how fringe and disconnected from reality they are, the more revealing facts are buried inside the poll numbers.

In the new Newsweek poll, taken over the last two days in the midst of the Ayers attacks, Obama now has a +24 favorability rating (60/36), which has improved from the +20 (57/37) he registered in last month’s poll.   In the new poll, McCain’s favorability rating is only +6 (51/45), which has worsened substantially since the +21 he registered last month (57/36).  The same has happened to Sarah Palin’s rating, which has dropped from +20 (52/32) in the prior month to a meager +4 now (49/45).

If anything, Americans see McCain — not Obama — as out-of-touch with their values, as 49% believe McCain does not share their values and only 47% believe he does.    By stark contrast, Americans overwhelmingly believe Obama shares their values (59-37%) (Newsweek, 12-14).  Americans also overwhelmingly believe that Obama would “fit well with people in your local community” (63-31%), while a much smaller margin (54-40%) says that about McCain (Newsweek 12, 14) .

Worse still (for the Right), a large majority — 55-39% — answer ”NO” when asked if Sarah Palin ”is qualified to step in as President if she had to” (Newsweek 14), whereas only 46% answered “NO” last month.  And 47% say that Hockey Mom Palin does not share their values, while only 48% say that Palin does (versus 59% who say that the Radical-Terrorist Obama shares their values) (Newsweek 14).  

Worse even still (for the Right), Americans say that Obama’s selection of Joe Biden makes them more likely to vote for Obama by a margin of 11% (34-23%), but say that McCain’s selection of Palin makes them less likely to vote for McCain by a margin of 8% (32-40%) (Fox 8-9).   And in the last month alone, the percent saying that McCain’s selection of Palin has made them less likely to vote for McCain has increased substantially (31% to 40%).

Even worse (for the Right), Obama the Terrorist now has the highest favorability rating of any of the four candidates (60%), while Palin the New Reagan Superstar has the lowest (47%).  And even Biden’s favorability rating (57%) is higher than McCain’s (53).  More revealingly, Palin has the highest unfavorability rating (42%), followed by McCain (40%), Obama (34%) and Biden (29%) (Fox 13-16).   

And in the last month — as the McCain/Palin campaign began spewing their bile — Obama’s favorability rating has increased (57% to 60%) while his unfavorability rating has declined (36% to 34%).  By contrast, McCain’s favorability/unfavorability ratings have plummeted during this same time (60/33 to 53/40), as has Palin’s (54/27 to 47/42).  Standing next to Sarah Palin in that debate has turned Joe Biden — Joe Biden — into a wildly popular politician in America, with a 57/29 favorability rating.

In sum, the more Americans see of and hear from Sarah Palin and are exposed to her filthy smear politics, the worse she looks to them.  And the more the McCain/Palin campaign attacks Obama with ugly, despicable smears, the worse McCain/Palin look, while Obama’s popularity with Americans continues to solidify and even gradually increase (Americans believe Obama is “trustworthy” by an overwhelming margin of 60-32%) (Fox 36).

And perhaps most damning of all for the McCain campaign, when asked which campaign has been “too negative or nasty,” Americans choose the McCain/Palin campaign by an overwhelming margin (39-10%) (Newsweek 17) — by far the most lopsided margin for that question over the last eight years (by comparison, both the Democratic and GOP campaigns of 2000 and 2004 registered no more than 24% on that question and each side received roughly equal ratings).  Fox specifically asked if the “Obama-Ayers connection” would make Americans less likely to vote for Obama, and Americans resoundingly answered NO (32-61%), and — as Greg Sargent notes — since GOP voters overwhelmingly answered “YES” to that question, and would not have voted for Obama anyway, the Ayers issue, even when Fox asked about it directly, has almost no effect.

Unsurprisingly, then, Americans overwhelmingly believe that the McCain/Palin ads are “too negative” (56-41%) and “misleading and distorting” (58-37%), while Americans overwhelmingly believe that the Obama/Biden ads are neither too negative (29-68%) nor misleading and distorting (36-57%) (Newsweek 23-24).  Americans believe Obama/Biden is running a “positive” rather than “negative” campaign (56-21%), but believe the opposite about McCain/Palin by an almost equal margin (27-51%) (Fox 38).

Having McCain and Palin run around the country stoking right-wing fury and unmasking their movement for all to see is backfiring in the extreme.   What is more likely than anything else to lead to a sure Obama victory — by landslide — is if the McCain/Palin campaign continues to cater itself to the desires and advice of the National Review/Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity mentality, which believes that Sarah Palin is a huge political asset among Normal Americans (Free Sarah Palin!) and that if Americans just keep hearing more and more and more about what a Terrorist-loving Muslim-Communist-radical Barack Hussein Obama is (ACORN!!), then  … any day now!  …  Americans are going to decide that they want the same twisted, bloated faction that has run our country into the ground for the last eight years to continue to rule. 

The Limbaugh/Fox News/Bill Kristol/National Review Right is a faction in desperate need of collective death as a movement.  And it will be particularly appropriate if the final blow is delivered by their own malicious, hate-mongering hand.

UPDATE: Two follow-ups to two posts here from this week:

(1) After the criticism here of The Washington Post’s Dan Balz yesterday for his misleadingly even-handed treatment of “character attacks” in the campaign, Balz wrote a much better and more honest article today, in which he makes clear that there is no comparison and states:

I wrote yesterday about the risks to both McCain and Obama — and the country — as they fire at one another in increasingly sharp terms. The danger is that the winner will come to office with a sizable portion of the population poisoned by the effects of the campaign.

But what’s also clear is that McCain’s tactics are over the line, with no restraint in sight, and threaten to provoke reactions among partisans on both sides that will continue to escalate.

I don’t know if there’s any causation between the criticism and his behavioral change, but it’s welcomed either way.

(2)  When I wrote earlier this week about Sean Hannity’s promotion of and reliance on one of the nation’s most virulent anti-semites, ”Andy Martin,” I noted that the ADL had, extraordinarily, said nothing to condemn Hannity for that behavior.  Today, they issued a letter to Hannity doing exactly that.  That should be useful:  ADL condemns Sean Hannity and Fox News for their reliance on “a man with an extensive track record of making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks” in a program attacking Barack Obama.  I wonder what South Florida voters would think about that.

UPDATE II: The McCain campaign is obviously reading the same polls and reaching the same conclusions.  Read Ana Marie Cox’s amazing account of how McCain — after stoking these sentiments for more than a week — suddenly and repeatedly tried to restrain and even admonish today’s lynch mob in Minnesota (h/t Andrew Sullivan).  But look at what the crowd is saying in their questions to McCain as a result of what the McCain/Palin campaign has done (“I’m scared of Barack Obama… he’s an Arab …”).  McCain repeatedly interrupted questions like this to say that Obama is a “decent family man” and to insist that disagreements with Obama be “respectful,” and Cox — an unrepentant, tire-swinging McCain lover if ever there was one — generously says:  “I think [McCain] means it.”

Right.  He spent the last seven days whipping up the Right in this country into an unprecedentedly ugly frenzy, and just as polls show that he is falling further behind and the tactics are backfiring (and as the former GOP Michigan Governor and long-time McCain supporter condemns McCain for these tactics and William F. Buckley’s Republican son endorses Obama, citing his radically changed behavior and his choice of Palin), McCain abruptly and flamboyantly condemns such sentiments.  Whatever else that is, genuine isn’t it.

UPDATE III: Or, as Nate Silver — after surveying the latest polls today like only he can — puts it:

With 25 days to go until the election, Barack Obama is presently at his all-time highs in four of the six national tracking polls (Research 2000, Battleground, Hotline and Zogby) and is just one point off his high in Gallup. He has emerged with clear leads in both Florida and Ohio, where there are several polls out today. He is blowing McCain out in most polls of Pennsylvania and Michigan, and is making states like West Virgina and Georgia competitive.

Screaming “AYERS!” and “ACORN!” just a few more times will change all of that any minute now.

UPDATE IV: Here is the video of McCain today, trying to undo what he and Sarah Palin have spent the last couple of weeks purposely unleashing: