How many people who strongly supported John McCain in 2000 could ever have dreamed that in 2008 he would become in-effect a surrogate for talk show host Sean Hannity?
McCain surrogate Rep. Michelle Bachmann appeared on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” today and her segment featured below is a barely-revised version of McCarthyism. She only left out holding up a list. The McCain of 2000 would have repudiated this kind of rhetoric.
And it isn’t a fluke. Another member of Congress was on another program this morning essentially saying the same thing, using the almost the same words. This is the apparently the message. Couple this with the robocalls and this is what it has boiled down to. Independent voters who — specific issues aside — generally detest this style of divisive, demonization politics will have a chance to register their disgust on Election Day.
Note Bachmann’s jaw-dropping suggestion at the end: members of Congress need to be investigated to see how anti-American they are.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.