You Need Gloves to Touch Him

Recent clips have started surfacing on Youtube of McCain-Palin supporters attending rallies for the Republican ticket. Most are filmed by passive observers, but the more interesting ones show the cameraman confronting attendees with questions regarding Barack Obama.

The majority of responses are tinged with a practiced ignorance of Obama's policies and his association with Islam but to be fair, misinformed voters are by no means a Republican phenomenon (perhaps a growing one, but that's a different post) and finding these people is like digging for coins you planted yourself; it's simply not that surprising when you find them.

Some of the responses, though, have a particular flavor of simmering animosity which presents something totally different from the normal JoeSixPack who thinks Obama is going to raise taxes on his $45k a year. Take for example the woman at 1:03 in this clip (The McCain-Palin Mob in Strongsville-Part1) who is able to label Obama as a terrorist because of his 'bloodlines'. Or the woman at 3:20 in this clip who has known Sarah Palin 'all my life' (The McCain-Palin Mob in Strongsville-Part2) stated as a dismissal of her sudden appearance on the national scene.

The feeling that crops up time and again in the videos is that the interviewees have no rational reason for opposing Obama, only the internal emotional trigger which twinges and tells them that something is wrong. These clues crop up all over the videos, from the inability to supply factual reasons for supporting Palin or opposing Obama, to the words of a child in the background stating, in reference to Obama, that 'you need gloves to touch him'. One can only hope that he was repeating a line fed to him by his mother and didn't come up with it himself.

The message is clear though and it looks to have been spread well among the Republican fold. 'Obama is the 'Other' coming to destroy what is left of the America we knew. Circle the wagons, get in line, or it's the End as we know it'. Let us hope that the GOP leadership has the foresight to end the politics of fear before it tears the country (and the GOP frankly) apart.