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Why McCain Won’t Play the Wright Card

October 9th, 2008
By ELROD

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One of the more disturbing trends at recent McCain/Palin rallies is the tendency of audience members to shout dangerous things, including “terrorist,” “kill him,” and “off with his head.” The Ayers issue - played mostly by Palin - has deliberately stoked this sort of rage at Obama. And more and more those asked to introduce Palin have invoked Barack “Hussein” Obama, clearly with the intention of making Obama look dangerous.

But they have not played the Wright card yet. Bill Kristol asked Sarah Palin why Wright has not come up and, while she wished the campaign went there, she acknowledged McCain’s refusal to bring it up.

But why?

McCain has suggested in the past that it would be “dishonorable” to bring the Wright issue up. But I don’t buy that at all; the whole campaign has been run in the gutter.

No, there is another reason why McCain won’t go the Wright route: he’s worried that he would lose control of it.

By invoking Reverend Wright, McCain would be explicitly injecting racial anxiety into the campaign. Wright, more than a radical preacher in most people’s eyes is a BLACK militant - a quasi-Farrakhan type. He symbolizes all that terrifies vaguely racist whites about African Americans in this country.

And the invocation of him would invite reaction from the crowd that would make “terrorist” seem like small potatoes. Yes, openly racist people would feel emboldened to attend a McCain/Palin rally and yell bigoted comments that would, undoubtedly, be picked up by the media. The rallies would be easily mocked as veritable Klan rallies as angry white mobs shout racial epithets at the very name of Jeremiah Wright. McCain would lose control of the issue and it would backfire.

That is why we will never hear about Jeremiah Wright from the McCain campaign. Much as some on the right would love to use it as a trump card against Obama, McCain’s top staff know that Wright would be like a live grenade that could blow up in their face. And they don’t want to go there.



This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 1:29 am and is filed under Black/African-American, Left-Wing, Anti-Americanism, Bigotry, Newsweek Blogitics, Sarah Palin, Negative Campaigning, At TMV, Ideologies, Society, Religion, 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Racism, John McCain, Christianity, Politics. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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    elrod, I think you're right on this... I have never considered this angle before and it makes perfect sense to me.

    I feel better about McCain if this is true.... better about him because this shows that he does think once in a while before plunging ahead with some idea. If McCain reaches a point where he feels he has nothing to lose I can only hope that he will continue to use this excellent judgement and forgo bringing up Wright's name.

    I can't imagine a presidential rally in today's America that devolves into a event with racist slurs shouted back and forth. And I agree with you, I don't think McCain wants this either. It was bad enough when a McCain/Palin supporter recently told a black sound man at an event to, "Sit down, boy". Tensions are already bubbling under the surface with the terrorist connection....

    Thanks, elrod!
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    My stock portfolio and 401k are in the dumpster- Im lucky enough to be young enough to weather it out but Ill still retire with a lot less. How does some inflammtaory preacher figure into that? McCain won't because the Obama camp will bring out Vogers( AIP head, an armed insurrectionist killed under questionable circumstance), Hagee, Parsley and Muthee.

    It's the ECONOMY , stupid- part II.
 
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