Mark R. Levin has it right:
Re ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Frank Marshal Davis, Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, Raila Odinga, and all of the assorted leftists and figures of ambiguous or veiled allegiance that form an unbroken chain throughout Obama's life, it is not a question of "palling around." It is a question of shared worldview. The only candidate who has surrounded himself with and befriended a freak show of racists, anti-Semites, and America haters is Barack Obama. This isn't guilt by association. These are Obama's life experiences. And
you'd think it would be more problematic than a few
people in an audience shouting out some nasty things about Obama.
The task is not, as McCain suggested respecting Ayers, to demand, "We
need to know the full extent of the relationship." Spoken like a true
Senator — tell somebody else to do something. The task is for McCain to
behave like a leader and rouse himself to explain the significance of
these relationships in so far as what they tell us about the
philosophical and historical understanding that will inform Obama's
decisions and choices as president.
It is the tactic of the
Left to shout down such efforts or demonize the messenger. John Lewis
was Obama's perfect surrogate for such a ploy. It is also their tactic
to redefine terms and misuse the language. So, we have the situation
where raising Obama's relationship with racists is said to be racist. I
understand this, and I understand Saul Alinksy. But it must be done and
done effectively. This is not to say that this is the only course of
conduct for the McCain campaign. There's actually so much out there for
McCain to focus on that his failure to do so in a coherent way is
frustrating as hell — including explaining the destructiveness of
Obama's extreme big-government beliefs and proposals, should they be
implemented. But McCain must have the will to engage in this fight or
he will lose badly — we will lose badly.