Why do Republicans hate community organizers?

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for victory, whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it, too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation, whether theyre wearing lipstick or not.

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palins acceptance speech. Aligning herself with a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri who followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency, she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity. Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, run our factories and fight our wars and are always proud of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didnt have to name names — who are none of the above.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Peglers too. He decreed America was done for after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a guttersnipe, and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (geese, he called them) were all likely Communists.

Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Peglers words but spirit into their candidates speech shows where theyre coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created a whole new Republican Party, but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.

The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay cosmopolitan urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.

The racial component to this brand of politics was undisguised in St. Paul. Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obamas only in America success as an affirmative-action fairy tale — and when he and Palin mocked Obamas history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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[AtlasShruggery]

Q: What do you call a conservative community organizer?

A: Grand Wizard.

[lucinda2005]

Palin=Nuclear Oblivion. mcCain dies. she has her neurotic hands on the N switch. it is god ordained to blow up the world(nut job,palin) it is serious folks! Do NOT Let the RePubs cheat and take us down

[STREETRACERONFUEL]

nazis are communists lol

[visini14]

@Armymaj Maybe you should "crack open a history book before you speak". The Nazi party, though called Socialist, weren't Socialist in any sense, they were Fascist. That is why people call the Republicans Nazis, because it is calling them Fascist. The only Union in Nazi Germany was the Nazi Union. They were destroying all Unions except for that one. Look that up. So, actually think before you type something that makes you look more ignorant than the people you are trying to degrade.

[Fuctmentality]

@Armymaj NAZIs are not socialist either dipshit. Socialists aren't liberal either. Please don't vote.

[BozoClownface]

Important. MSNBC is NOT a News agency. This woman can only make her case by trying to dig through archives and find some contradiction on her opposing side. Obviously, she could do the same thing to Anyway , IF she wanted.

[Armymaj]

I laugh at anyone who refer to Republicans as Nazis. The Nazis were the National Democratic SOCIALIST Party. Socialists are left or liberal. The Nazis socialized every aspect of German society, they had works programs similar to what FDR did in the 30's. So please crack open a history book before you speak of what you do not know. Here energy the lesson.

[Bladewing10]

Evidently the Democrats aren't too keen on community organizers either. ACORN went under despite no evidence against them and the Democrats didn't raise a finger to help them. The Republicans are heartless and the Democrats are hypocrites. Can we please get a 3rd or 4th or 5th party in this country?

[kentuckydominatesall]

@unelmitchell hahahaha clueless nazis? You're obviously the clueless one for calling me a member of an almost extinct hate group for 70 years! Community Organizers(bums who need to make themselves sound valuble) do nothing! Give me one good thing that has ever come from Acorn or any other "community organizer".

[unelmitchell]

@kentuckydominatesall you are a clueless Nazis. i can see why "KENTUCKY ". case close.

[unelmitchell]

@heyazzhole  and now all the republicans are KKKonservatives now !

[moneyball2020]

Rachel Madcow your just about as disgusting a human being as it can get. How's that tingle down your Leg Mathews ever get that looked at ?