The REAL America?

One of the most vile ideas coming out of the McCain campaign is the view that there is a REAL America, represented only by people who support John McCain, and that there are REAL Americans, represented only by people whom the McCain campaign designates as true and patriotic, that is, only those who are conservative.

I have become more and more discouraged as I've heard this viewpoint promulgated by spokespeople of the McCain campaign. We hear this view from Sarah Palin, the woman who would be one heart-beat away from the presidency were John McCain to win the presidential race, when she says that Barak Obama doesn't see America as her supporters see America. Again and again, Palin attempts in her speeches to paint Obama as "other," not a true American.

This view that only far-right conservatives are true patriots can be seen in the ranting of Republican Representative from Minnesota, Michelle Bachman, who recently on Chris Matthews' Hardball, suggested that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and called for an investigation of members of Congress to "find out if they are pro-American or anti-American." Good God! Are we going to return to the McCarthyism of the fifties?

And now here is McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer claiming that a part of Virginia in which Democrats are the majority is not the "real Virginia." (And I really took offense with Pfotenhauer's claiming that the part of Virginia that's more of the traditional South is the more truly American. Has she thought of what that claim sounds like? The Old Slavery South versus the Union North?)

We might be generous enough to give Joe McCain, John McCain's brother, a pass when he makes a bad joke about Democrat-leaning parts of Virginia as being "Communist Country," but Sarah Palin is on the Republican presidential running ticket, Pfotenhauer is an official spokesperson for the McCain campaign, and Bachman represents Republicans in Minnesota.

During this financial crisis that our country faces, during these trying times, we need leaders who can unite us, not divide us.