Guilt by Juxtaposition.

McCain was right to correct the woman who called Obama an "Arab" last week, but it seems like his campaign is only repentant when the top of the ticket is directly confronted with an atrocious statement. For them the problem, it seems, was that they were becoming too obvious.

To the McCain campaign, it's all fine and good for Palin to give speeches unburdened by any adherence to the truth, as her political career is expendable in the pursuit of a McCain win. How else can you explain her assertion that Obama has "unconditional support for unlimited abortion". I'm increasingly convinced that she was chosen to dominate the news, hopefully gather support from women, and be given the assignment of saying things that would irreparably damage the reputation of a politician with a more legitimate future on the national stage. She's like Mikey from the old LIFE cereal commercials. You know, the kid who would eat anything so they fed him things they wouldn't try themselves? In this case it's more like, "I don't know, that statement could really come back to haunt someone. Give it to Sarah... she'll say anything".

So, while McCain is out trying to swim his way out of the quicksand that his rhetoric has created, Sarah is still out there serving as the other side of a two-faced message. In Ohio on Sunday, she continued McCain's message of "we know how to do stuff" by talking about "bad guys":

“Help me, Ohio, to help put John McCain in the White House,” she said. “He understands. He understands you. We understand how important it is that this team be elected. For one thing, we know who the bad guys are, OK?”

That statement elicited scattered shouts of “Obama!” throughout the crowd.

“We know that in the war, it’s terrorists, terrorists who hate America and her allies and would seek to destroy us, and the bad guys are those who would support and sympathize with the terrorists,” she said. “They do not like America because of what we stand for. Liberty. Freedom. Equal rights. Those who sympathize and support those terrorists who would seek to destroy all that it is that we value, those are the bad guys, OK?”

Notice she's saying it's not the terrorists themselves who are the "bad guys", but instead those who are associated with them. The crowd was already shouting Obama's name as she said it.

Veiled in language basic enough to make the listener feel like a 2nd-grader being read a story, the subtle purpose of the message falls more under the "evil genius" level of strategy. See, the last couple of weeks the McCain campaign and its minions, er, surrogates, have wasted no opportunity to place the name Obama in the same sentence as the word "terrorist".

Herein lies the new guilt by association. Call it guilt by juxtaposition. Over and over again we were told that it is legitimate to question why Obama is associated with a terrorist. To be fair, it is legitimate to question such things, but their intent was not to get to the bottom of Obama's association with Ayers. They created a mob, and McCain took two steps back while Palin took advantage of their successful efforts to create the impression that Obama=terrorist associate, and simply stopped saying "Obama". Now it's terrorist associates who are the bad guys and not the terrorists themselves. Having successfully outlined for an angry crowd who the "bad guys" are, later in the speech she added the following:

“All across America, I know that there’s a lot of anger right now,” she said. “There’s anger about the insider dealing of lobbyists and anger at the greed of Wall Street, and anger about the arrogance of the Washington elite. And with serious reforms to change Washington, John McCain is going to turn your anger into action.”

I know, I know. She's talking about the economy and government reform here. At least to the depth of her ability. Still, I cringed at the last five words of that statement. Given what we've seen from these crowds, and how they are directing their anger, should she suggest (in any context) that it's a good idea to "turn your anger into action"?