One of the things that I was happy to see with this year's campaigns, at least now that we are out of the primaries, is that the use of blatant hate as a tool for winning the presidency was greatly reduced compared to the Rove/Bush elections in the two previous presidential campaigns. Neither of the major party candidates were standing on stage bashing away at a minority group, such as was done towards gays during the Bush campaigns. Not only did they personally stay away from this type of rhetoric, but they kept their campaign's away from it too.
Over the last month however, that has changed in the McCain campaign. Now they have Sarah Palin out there, acting like a junior Bush, trying to stir up hate and fear towards their chosen minority, anyone perceived as different than "Joe the Plummer". As Colin Powell pointed out this weekend, they have also unleashed the surrogates, Republicans in congress, to reinforce the idea of Obama as a "secret Muslim". Indirectly implying that some how being a Muslim automatically disqualifies a person from being a "good American".
I'm beyond sick of hearing hateful speech spew forth from the White House towards various minority groups in order to gain political points. I also have zero tolerance for the idea that some how having either a Muslim or Arab background inherently makes someone unpatriotic.
So I've changed my mind, despite thinking that both Obama's health care plan and judicial choices will be wrong for this country, I would rather have that then the risk of Sarah Palin ending up as President and forcing me to endure eight years of Bush 3.0.
