Is This What It Has Come Down To?

John McCain delivers yet another invective-filled stump speech, this one at a rally in New Mexico. He asks rhetorically:

"Who is the real Barack Obama?"

Someone shouts:

"A terrorist!"

The crowd cheers. McCain remains silent.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is doing her part in Clearwater, Florida, telling a rally where reporters are herded away from the audience by campaign workers, that:

"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day."

The crowd boos.

"I knew you guys would react that way, okay. So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago."

More boos.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers."

Still more boos.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol."

Booing continues, accented by the shout of a man in the audience:

"Kill him!"

The crowd cheers. Palin remains silent.

This is not merely lowering the bar. This is playing to the basest instincts of a lynch mob. We can only pray that some demented soul doesn't take the tacit support of McCain and Palin for such hatefulness as a message to . . . K - I - L - L - H - I - M.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP-Getty