And why so many of us find it such a toxic place to be:
An entire election and an entire political season may be reduced by one party to three words uttered by a black pastor without context and conflated with the Democratic nominee. And it works in Mississippi primarily because the pastor is black and the candidate is black. Pure Rove. Meanwhile, as Ben Smith notes, the Mississippi Daily Journal is able to hail McCain as disowning the ad while the ad continues to play on television.
The question, of course, is whether this kind of crude, content-free racial and ideological demagoguery will backfire outside places such as Mississippi. I don't know. But if Republicans want to know why so many of us cannot stomach their politics any more, they don't have far to look.
