Conservative luminary Phyllis Schlafly panned Sen. John McCain's conservative credentials this morning on Fox 2 News. Schlafly is one of many conservatives who are less-than convinced of McCain's conservative mettle.
Those doubts were never more evident than McCains neck-and-neck finishes in the later primaries against Gov. Mike Huckabee. At that point, McCain's only serious rival, Gov. Mitt Romney had dropped out and Huckabee had no actual chance of catching the "Strait Talk Express", due to his delegate lead.
Despite that. Republican voters kept pulling the lever for Huckabee, denying McCain clear victories, but never really throwing his eventual win into doubt due to the Republican's winner-take-all primaries.
Schlafly was interviewed on the morning show about the honorary degree
she is set to recieve from Washington University, and the protest it
has generated.
When asked if she was bothered by the dissent that her appearance may generate at the commencement, she dismissed the critics as a tiny minority.
"What? The 30 people out of 1000?" retorted Schlafly.
Schlafly joins producer Quincy Jones, MSNBC political analyst Chris Matthews and others in recieving honorary degrees from the local university.
It will not be Schlafly's first degree from the school, she recieved both her bachelor's degree and law degree from Washington University.
Washington Post: Obama's Campaign Encounters Racism
Washington Post: Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"
