McCain't and His Shadow Message

We all agree that the McCain't campaign chose Sarah Palin because the Christianist base would have bolted if McCain't had gotten his way and chosen Lieberman, a pro-choice Jew who couldn't bring himself to become a Republican.

Indeed, the Palin selection appears to communicate other messages to the base. In her RNC convention speech, written by Bush senior speechwriter Matthew Scully, she approvingly quoted "a writer" who observed, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and integrity." That writer was Westbrook Pegler, a virulent McCarthyite, anti-Roosevelt, anti-union, and anti-Semitic right-wing Hearst columnist who thought Jewish immigrants to America were "geese" and who were likely all Communists.

Frank Rich suggested that the Pegler quote was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to the far-wing supporters that McCain't was really on their side.

After that quote, Palin's next sentence was moronic in the extreme, and yet another lie: "I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman." What's funny about this is that Pegler wrote that Truman was a "thin-lipped hater." If that's praise...hoo boy! I think she probably failed English 101 in one of the six colleges she attended. As Rich observed, she knows no more about Pegler than she does the Bush Doctrine.

Some other Pegler background: in 1965, as Pegler observed the contemplated campaign of Robert F. Kennedy for President, he wrote: "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wonders what other writers are on Palin's reading list. Andrew MacDonald, perhaps?

McCain't lies demonstrably, and when the press calls them on it, they refuse to retract. Despicable.