Column by Chris Graham
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Do the right thing, John. Call it off. Now. Not because it will do you well at the polls. That ship ain’t gonna sail at this point, not with the cannons misfiring as wildly as they have been the past couple of weeks.
You’ve got to call these shenanigans off to save your good name. And it might be too late for that already.
Your supporters are showing up at campaign rallies calling Barack Obama a “terrorist” and calling for his murder. They’re even booing you when you try to allay the fears of an Obama presidency that you’ve been stoking by calling him a “decent person.” Don’t be surprised. You’re the one who conjured up the bloodlust; it was inevitable that they were going to turn on you, because they trust you as much as they do Obama, which is to say, about as much as it rains in the Arizona desert in the summer.
Innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire. Me, for example, who has been the subject of a recent e-mail campaign to try to get advertisers to end their relations with my publication, my crime being that I have publicly backed Obama for president. And then the tens of thousands of race fans at the NASCAR race in Bristol a few weeks ago, according to a local who attended the race and e-mailed me about a man carrying a McCain sign screaming to passersby: “Vote for the white man! Don’t vote for the n—.”
What does it have to come to, John? Does somebody have to actually take a shot at Obama between now and Nov. 4 to get you to stand up and take notice? Does an Obama supporter have to be physically attacked on the street or at an election headquarters? I ask because nothing would surprise me at this point.
You have served your country admirably, both in the military and for 26 years in the United States Congress. And you yourself were subjected to these kind of Swift Boat attacks when you ran for president in 2000, as it turns out by the very people who are now doing to Obama in your name what was done to you in the name of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.
Think back to how it felt when those folks in South Carolina got those slimy robocalls about your adopted daughter being an illegitimate black child, and those jerks got away with it when Bush won South Carolina and ultimately the GOP nomination and the presidency.
It can’t be worth it, and I can see in your body language that you know. Your look of disgust Friday night at that town hall in Minnesota gave you away. And then your press spokesman goes out afterward and adamantly insists that the craprain is going to continue to shower down indefinitely.
I assume you’re still the nominee, and that those guys are supposed to work for you. Am I right about that?
Then do the right thing, the honorable thing, and be John McCain, win or lose.
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Chris Graham
