Republicans with more regard for biblically inspired beliefs must've blanched when Sarah Palin, with un-Christian sarcasm, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with his toothy Batman "Joker" grin, mocked Barack Obama's years as a community organizer among the needy as so much piffle.
As other Republicans and Democrats familiar with the Scriptures know, Jesus of Nazareth was a community organizer who galvanized Christianity to spread good works in the world.
Other community organizers would come. Mahatma Gandhi organized masses in India to gain independence from Britain. During America's Great Depression, community organizers fed millions of down-and-out families. Martin Luther King Jr. organized communities to battle racial oppression and lead the way to civil rights legislation. Without community organizers, the chaos in New Orleans after Katrina would've been manifold. The Peace Corps is an international organizer of remote overseas communities to fight poverty and illiteracy. And hundreds of U.S. Army and private contractor community organizers now are organizing Iraqis to rebuild their country.
However, mocking Obama's civic good deeds—part of what Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen calls "(Palin's) jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood, and her personal attacks"—is a hint of nastiness to come from Karl Rove protégés in the McCain-Palin camp.
Worse is insulting the intelligence of thinking voters.
John McCain's chant of "change, change, change" defies belief. His 26 years in Washington shows only spotty differences with the basic Republican agenda, and, as Barack Obama's campaign points out, 90 percent lockstep agreement with George W. Bush. Whenever he talks reform, he quickly switches when heat from the right wing scorches. And with his campaign managed by Rove's sidekick—this is "change"?
His running mate, indeed, is a convert to "change." She now shares McCain's damnation of earmarks—although Palin requested $750 million in special federal doles for a state that this year kicks back nearly $4,000 to each resident from oil royalties.
Americans have rejected the Bush presidency's cynical use of God and religion in policies. But Palin would restore them. She is relying on God, she says, to engineer construction of an Alaska pipeline, although God has not acted as yet.
McCain won't change everything, however. Criteria for picking Supreme Court justices will be the same rightwing ideology of justices Scalia, Roberts and Alito.
Finally, having robbed the media for every ounce of fawning and adoration, McCain has shut down press access to his "Straight Talk Express" to avoid questions about the real John McCain.
