Must-read: Frank Rich on the ‘Weimar-like rage’ of the McCain Palin mob

We’ve posted numerous clips of the increasingly rancid, racist and xenophobic rhetoric of McCain/Palin campaign rallies (like this, and this). In retrospect, the words of author Jeff Sharlet — who compared Palin to George Wallace, the late segregationist governor of Alabama, just a couple of weeks after Palin was added to the Republican ticket — seem more than prescient.

In yesterday’s NYT, Frank Rich wrote:

At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option….

What… has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!”

Read the Frank Rich column.