Michelle Malkin and other conservative bloggers are attempting to draw an equivalence between the tone and rhetoric of recent McCain-Palin rallies and the fact that two men torched a McCain sign in Sellwood, Oregon.
The problem with this argument is that Rick Davis is absolutely right that campaigns can’t be held responsible for “the occasional nut” who does something crazy. That’s not the criticism of the McCain campaign that’s being made. The issue isn’t that random people sometimes do crazy things. (I see Malkin’s sign burners as comparable to whoever sent an envelope of white powder to an Obama HQ in LA, which also did not make the front page—and it shouldn’t have.)
The issue is that the McCain campaign, and their buddies in the conservative media, are enabling and encouraging crazy behavior by making the argument that Obama is an un-American subversive who is part of a secret socialist conspiracy to steal the election. The opposite argument, that the Obama campaign is encouraging a violent response to its rivals, simply can’t be made, regardless of what the occasional nut does.
—A. Serwer
