Who Can Find the Most Offensive Material in the 2008 Presidential Race?

At this point, it's not really that hard. I think back to one the old Scooby-Doo incarnations, particularly "The 13 Ghosts of Scoob-Doo," where Scooby and Shaggy opened up a demonic-looking chest that contained (you guessed it!) the 13 worst ghosts/monsters ever imagined. The rest of the series was about Scooby, Shaggy and whoever else Hanna-Barbara/Warner Bros. bothered to add (doubt Fred was involved; he was never that popular) getting these ghosts back in the box.

That pretty much sums up my characterization of the McCain Campaign's most recent decent into race-baiting for votes. But I digress.

Well, Dave found this "interesting" flier where members of McCain's Campaign compared Barack Obama to Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Castro. What, no Genghis Khan? Oh, and he has this piece on conservative white guy Charles Krauthammer trying to redefine racism so the rabid bigots attending the McCain/Palin rallies look more like the crowds at the Philharmonic.

There are the gems that Oliver found: reaction to the Colin Powell endorsement of Obama, journalists being kicked, people tearing down Obama signs in mad anger.

Then there are diaries over at Daily Kos about Obama supporters being assaulted, protecting your yard from vandals, and Pat Buchanan setting the GOP phasers to full racist.

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall sums up the McCain Campaign's decent into Racial Madness quite nicely (with special attention to the nasty robocalls).

I once talked about how Hillary Clinton's Primary Campaign invoked the Operation: Uncle Ruckus strategy, which basically boiled down to them saying, "Hey, voters: it's OK to vote based on race and doubt." The GOP rendition of this strategy has gone even further, essentially saying, "Obama is a black, socialist radical who supports terrorism and will use the white house to give every Negro 100 acres, 26 mules and their very own white slaves. Plus he'll raise your taxes." It's worse then anything Clinton could have thought of, and it's dangerously divisive. If there was any truth that Barack Obama was some bin Laden-influenced sleeper cell, he would not be where he is now. There's no way he'd have won a Senate seat (people seem to have forgotten the hell actual Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison has and continues to face) . I doubt that John Edwards or Clinton would have waited until the 11th Hour to bring up such ties. McCain's been chastised by some of his own supporters for "taking too long," implying that someone in his Campaign figured that there's a legitimate reason for not going so negative so soon (I would say because they knew it was bullshit, but that's just me).

I'd like to say that things will calm down, that the race-baiting will subside. But I don't get the feeling that it will.