Joe McCain: N. Virginia "Communist";
John McCain: Obama Socialist
Is McCain a far Right extremist?
When McCain calls Obama a "socialist," is he Red-baiting?
Republicans back in the 1950s through the 1980s routinely accused Democrats of being "Communists" or hinted around that they were fellow travelers or 'soft on communism.' Richard M. Nixon, the grand dragon of dirty tricks, described the Democratic standard bearer in 1952, Adlai Stevenson, as a man with a "PhD from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment." Nixon never did anything to contradict the policy of containing communism (one supposes the alternative was a nuclear war) and he decades later opened Communist China.
Fabulously wealthy arch-conservative Godfather Richard Mellon Scaife notoriously called journalist Karen Rothmeyer a 'f*cking Communist c*nt' when she asked him about his funding practices.
These charges of "Communism" against mainstream American politicians and journalists would have made no sense to the public save for the propaganda activities of the much less reputable Far Right, which was a small but disproportionately important part of the American right wing.
It is therefore not suprising that a Republican senator from Florida comapared Obama's taxation policies to Communism.
McCain has known close associations with the nuttier of the far right political cults, such as Gen. John Singlaub's "US Council for World Freedom."
But McCain is after all a senator and has to mince words to remain a viable candidate. Let us listen to his brother, Joe McCain, who, according to Nicholas F. Benton of The Falls Church News recently characterized Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia as Communist territory, causing some prominent N. Virginia Republicans to resign:
' 'Yesterday, Falls Church City Councilman David Snyder, a former mayor who's been on the City Council since 1994 and is the most prominent Republican elected official in the City, announced in a letter submitted to the News-Press (printed elsewhere in this edition) that he's disassociated with the Virginia GOP. Snyder accented his letter with angry comments made to the News-Press in a phone interview yesterday. He said that well-publicized comments by GOP Presidential candidate John McCain's brother, Joe McCain, in Alexandria last weekend was the "final straw." Joe McCain, speaking at a rally in support of his brother's campaign, said that Northern Virginia is a "communist country." "Such a label is deeply offensive for all of us," Snyder said in his letter. "This is yet another reminder of the neo-McCarthyism now so much a part of the political debate." He concluded, "The Virginia Republican Party, under whose tent these comments were made, is not a party with which I wish to be associated for this and many other reasons, unless and until it returns to the principles of its once revered former leaders, such Abraham Lincoln and Dwight David Eisenhower." '
McCain's pattern of associations, with Singlaub and G. Gordon Liddy, and the bizarre, even nutty pronouncements of his brother Joe (which may well tell us something about McCain family traditions of thinking in terms of political conspiracies), raise the severest questions about McCain's fitness to be president.
As for socialism, when the Republican administration is having the government buy bank stocks, that cow is out of the barn.
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/19/2008 12:52:00 AM
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China, still described as communist, is and has been growing at astonishing rate, and has bailed out the USA to the tune of trillions with its overflowing reserves.
Moreover, Communism is no longer the bogey man used to scare the American people silly. I very much doubt if the ordinary Americans still consider Socialism as a dirty word.
The problem with the charge of "communism" or even "socialism" is that the two terms don't have the same emotional resonance today that they used to have. Even such an important event in the history of communism as the fall of the Berlin Wall is almost twenty years in the past now. I suspect most non-Republicans (and perhaps even a significant number of real world Republicans) would view these charges as spurious and ignore them for the irrelevancies that they are.
McCain's anti-Socialist crusade
Probably the most horrifying aspect of McCain's anti-Socialist rhetoric is that it is all taxation-driven.
For decades, the GOP practiced the belief that tax cuts are a magic cure for all economic problems. Fighting any opposition to tax cuts became their main goal.
Now, looking at McCain's anti-Socialist crusade, we find out that it is all about taxes again. It is Obama's intent to reverse tax cuts for the wealthy that drives McCain mad.
The problem is, current crisis is not directly related to taxes, this is a credit system meltdown! That is, McCain's wrath is completely disconnected from real life economic situation - something really scary when situation calls for decisive action.
I have heard Virginia Republicans refer to the Virginia city of Alexandria as "the People's Republic of Alexandria," and I just heard a female GOPer (from the McCain campain I think) say that Northern Virginia (which is leaning heavily Obama) is not "real Virginia" because it includes people who have moved from DC. The more Southern portions of the state are "real" se asserted (naturally leaving out the Southern portions of the state with African-American populations)
Kareem RS Kahn
Thank you Colin Powell
Somewhat off-topic, and despite the fact that many may already have watched it, I feel compelled to bring the following interview with General Colin Powell to the attention of the readers of this section:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj75WliRXfs
It is absolutely tragic that General Powell's reputation was so rudely and irreparably tarnished by his now infamous 2003 address to the UN Security Council. How many people, politicians included, do we know who can give such a measured and comprehensive assessment of the presidential candidates in front of millions of viewers?
BF.
Just caught an item on CNN. Obama's campaigned more than McCain in "real Virginia" which is why he'll win VA and the election will be over before I sit down to dinner on the Left Coast
What I want to know is how is our current defense spending not the epitome of "socialism," in the wingnut sense of the word?
I guess we are going to find out in this election if the politics of hate still works in America.
Hmmm, funny how it's never scary when China owns a bunch of US debt-them being, well, communist-but the very mention of liberals in VA causes the wing nuts to drool venom McCarthy style
The best news of the day is Powell's endorsement.
Furthermore, Powell brilliantly defended US Muslims, and at last put the record straight on the answer to that lady who told McCain Obama was a Muslim :
"The correct answer. He is not a Muslim," Powell said. "He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: 'What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America."
He cited a story about a Muslim American solider who died serving in Iraq to argue that Muslim Americans also love and defend America.
A Socialist would nationalize the banks and credit institutions.
Oh, wait...
A great cartoon lambasting this phenomenon on the Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 blog...
Since Senator McCain has voted for the 'bailout' for Wall Street and the banks, is he a socialist? Does he consider Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland our enemies? Has he looked at their standard of living, their mortality rates, the progress of their countries and the innovations that come from them? These are not Third World countries. They are dynamic and healthy. Yes, they have their own sets of problems, but being 19th in Infant Mortality in the world is not one of them, as it is here. There is freedom of the press, freedom of personal expression, no book bannings, no Guantanamo and assaults on the Constitution. Senator McCain and his ilk, including fabulously wealthy wife Cindy, do not want to be taxed fairly. They want to keep it all to themselves. So, they howl about Socialism. Taxes? What about loopholes, offshore accounts, charitable giving to already wealthy schools, and every other tax dodge used by the wealthy and the fat-cat corporations. Many pay no taxes at all. I am weary of the whining and puling of the rich and the greedy. If they were doing their fair share, the food pantry shelves would not be empty. Instead, they want ANOTHER house, ANOTHER yacht, ANOTHER personal jet. Their selfishness has reached toxic proportions. And, John McCain is one of them. When did he last mop a floor or clean a toilet? Same for Cindy Lou. They do not really relate to the average person. They are like the Bushes, all for their own class of robber barons. Class Warfare? What about the bleeding of the Middle Class? Bush's tax cuts have not resulted in any trickle down effect. It has been a flood of money into the pockets of the wealthy, with a drought for the rest of us. CEO's of health insurance companies are feeding on our life's blood. CEO's of oil companies are draining us dry. McCain is the one who wants to continue the class warfare. Evidently, he and the Neo-cons are out to totally destroy the Middle Class, let the poor rot in the streets, and sneer at the hoi-poloi.Any Middle Class person who votes for these thieves is shooting themselves in the foot.The rich will continue to prosper with their offshore accounts. Everyone else will be left to "eat cake."
This occurred to me today: in Palin's Alaska, she raised taxes on the rich oil companies to put into a general fund to be redistributed directly to Alaskan citizens. This is a lot more "socialist" than Obama's stated tax objectives.
In fact it resembles Venezuela and other countries who have nationalized their oil industries to fund social programs, if not direct giveaways. Talk about a "red" state . . .
Almost all of the attack lines about stealing from the rich to give a check to people who don't pay taxes could be reworked to apply to Nanook the Plumber. I think he got an extra $1200 last year when the oil prices hit the roof.
China is post-communist. Free enterprise flourishes here.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
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