Some observers of the current presidential campaign have expressed surprise and asked why so many forces of hate have shouted angry epithets of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at emotionally tinged Sarah Palin rallies.

The real question to ask is "Why would these hateful elements not be there?"

Republican operatives realize that there is a far right, kook element of their party that they make fun of in private, with such documentation currently existing, but pander to in the saddest, most debasing way at political crunch time.

If in place of Palin a Candidate X were to address Republican rallies arguing strongly for a different economic plan to bring the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this would call for thinking rather than vicious shouts.  Appeal to the narrowest base of the party and the fringe element angrily converges.

Despite John McCain's self-assertion of a "maverick" and his statement six months ago that he wants nothing to do with negative campaigning that impacts harshly on America, his campaign has slid into that familiar Republican mud throwing mode that has characterized what was formerly the party of Lincoln so many times in the post-World War Two years.

After the U.S. eagerly resisted Nazi totalitarianism in a war fought while two Democratic presidents were in charge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman respectively, it took little time for the demagogic Senator Joe McCarthy during the sharply divisive 1952 campaign to call the two decade tenure of the Democrats under the two aforementioned leaders "20 years of treason."

It should also be mentioned that, many charges and humongous amounts of consumed alcohol later, after Republican President Dwight Eisenhower froze him out of the party apparatus and cut off much of his publicity spigot by urging non-cooperation with the witch hunting McCarthy Committee, the nefarious solon apologized to what was left of his zealot supporters while adding "4 more years of treason" to Eisenhower's watch.

After having seen the way the political winds were blowing, McCarthy's former ally and partner in slime, then Vice President Richard Nixon, decided it was time to tiptoe away.  After all, he was hoping and ultimately became party nominee under the same Eisenhower that McCarthy was convinced was part of the nation's vast "treason" apparatus.