"Hostile," "Angry" Crowds Cheer on McCain-Palin
Reporters Elisabeth Bumiller and Patrick Healy monitored a McCain rally in Wisconsin for more signs of GOP "anger" in Friday's "McCain Joins Attacks On Obama Over Radical." (At least the paper called the unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers a "radical.")The caption under a photo of McCain and Palin set the tone of the piece: "John McCain and Sarah Palin on Thursday in Waukesha, Wis. Their rallies have taken on an increasingly hostile atmosphere."
Bumiller and Healy lead off with those "angry" crowds:
Senator John McCain joined in the attacks on Thursday on Senator Barack Obama for his ties to the 1960s radical William Ayers, telling an angry, raucous crowd in Wisconsin that "we need to know the full extent of the relationship" to judge whether Mr. Obama "is telling the truth to the American people or not."
....
But what has been most striking about the last 48 hours on the campaign trail is the increasingly hostile atmosphere at Mr. McCain's rallies, where voters furiously booed any mention of Mr. Obama and lashed out at the Democrats, Wall Street and the news media.
"I'm really mad!" shouted a man in the audience in Waukesha, where Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, were conducting a town-hall-style meeting. "And what's going to surprise you, it's not the economy. It's the socialists taking over our country."
Co-author Bumiller followed up her piece yesterday with another crack about the predominantly white Republican crowd:
A short time later, James T. Harris, a conservative talk radio host in Wisconsin who was one of the few African-Americans in the crowd, stood up and told Mr. McCain that in the next presidential debate, on Wednesday, "it's absolutely vital that you take it to Obama, that you hit him" where it hurts, because "we have all of these shady characters that have surrounded him," as well as, he said, Mr. Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
The headline gave the game way on a Thursday night posting at nytimes.com from reporter Michael Grynbaum, "In Struggling Ohio Town, Palin Again Invokes Ayers." The Times is having it both ways - suggesting the McCain campaign is not dealing with real issues of interest to voters yet reacting with alarm when crowds respond positively to the attacks on Obama and Ayers.
Notice that the McCain campaign is merely "trying" to tie Ayers to Obama, as if the ties aren't actually there:
Ms. Palin also went on the attack early, invoking the name of William Ayers, the 1960s radical whom the McCain campaign has repeatedly tried to tie to Mr. Obama.
The crowd made it quite clear that it wholeheartedly agreed with Ms. Palin's attacks on the Democratic nominee, but there were few signs of the raw anger that has arisen at recent Palin events. Audience members loudly chanted "No-Bama" at points and booed at Mr. Obama's name.
