Slashing out at dragons as election day approaches in the U.S.

In war and in politics there is a point when the threat of defeat causes less than rational reactions. That appears to be the case with the most out-and-out rightwing supporters of John McCain, obviously not very happy about the possibility of seeing a non WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) open the doors of the White House. After eight years of evangelical conservativism under the George Bush administration, it is understandable that a young, blackish, progressive minded intellectual should cause a stir in conservative hearts.

Yet the accusations in the form of verbal blasts from McCain’s followers appear to suggest more than anything else the fear that defeat is around the corner. Curiously, at the same time Democrat Barak Obama is taking strong steps towards incorporating numerous "establishment" figures into his camp--something which raises the question concerning how deep the proposed "changes" will actually go. The latest: Colin Powel, the sort-of-black architect of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policies, like McCain a veteran of the U.S. war against Vietnam.  Powell describes one revealing action in his "My American Journey,"  recounting his reaction when he spotted his first dead Viet Cong: “He lay on his back, gazing up at us with sightless eyes,” Powell wrote. “I felt nothing, certainly not sympathy. I had seen too much death and suffering on our side to care anything about what happened on theirs.”

The incorporation of figures like this in Obama’s campaign wagon certainly suggest that the rightwing accusations against him are exaggerated, but in politics as in war the players frequently overact.
  The conservatives--with such diverse forces as "rebirth" Christians, the so-called free market freaks, gung-ho nationalists at a time when the world is being globalized and those from "middle America" with a viseral dislike for big government--see their continuation in power under serious threat and therefore have resorted to efforts to delegitimize their opponent.

This was clear in the last TV debate when McCain confronted his opponent with the "Bill Ayers" charge. Ayers was associated with the leftist "Weather Underground" movement active during the struggle against the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. McCain is a veteran of that war and in the debate demanded that Obama’s alleged ties with Ayers--now an education expert--be cleared up.

The tactic was clear: smear the opponent with a now non-existent radical movement to then question Obama’s loyalty to the "American way of life," to depict him as an untrusty politician outside the American mainstream. 

On the fringe of the Republican party campaign, however, there are rightwing groups that are going to even greater extremes to blast Obama. There is an oufit called the "National Republican Trust Political Action Committee, for example, which has sent out e-mails to potential conservative donors calling Obama dangerous and bringing up an appropriate issue, Obama’s support for allowing undocumented aliens to obtain driver’s licenses. According to the rightwing group, this would constitute a sort of plot to kill thousands of Americans, suggesting Obama doesn’t understand the dangers facing the country and may even help terrorists destroy the country.

Then there is the charge that Obama is "socialist," a very bad word in U.S. politics, evoking the furious anti-communism of the 1950´s This attack stems from the plan of Obama to raise taxes on the well-to-do to help finance tax cuts for the middle class and is termed "class warfare." Richard Viguerie, chairman of the Conservative HQ.com and a founder of the modern conservative movement, goes even further, saying Obama’s economic policy can be summed up as "Marxism/Socialism."