Is Negative Rhetoric a License to Taunt?

Oct 8, 2008— -- The McCain campaign has made no secret of its plans to spend these final weeks of the election going negative -- attacking Sen. Barack Obama on his judgment, questioning his associations and unleashing self-described "pitbull" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to do much of the dirty work.

"For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off," she told a group of Republican donors in Naples, Fla., on Monday.

As the rhetoric at Palin's rallies has ratcheted up, so too has the language of supporters in the crowds coming to see her. At rallies in Florida, supporters were heard yelling "treason" and "traitor" when Obama's name was mentioned.

At a rally on Monday in Clearwater, one man shouted "Kill him," according to the Washington Post, after Palin mentioned Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers. It was not clear who made the comment or if the man was referring to Ayers or to Obama, but the Secret Service says it will investigate.

"One of [Obama's] earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said Monday, eliciting boos from the crowd. "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she said to more boos and the one man's call to "kill him."

Palin's speeches and a series of recently released negative ads, some pundits say, are all par for the course in the waning days of a closely fought contest. Now questions are being raised, by the opposition and by outside observers, about whether Palin is stoking people's worst natures and, more broadly, about when a candidate should take her supporters to task when they go too far.

"At some level, negative rhetoric is part of the game. But is it truly dangerous?" asked Kimberly Gross, a professor of political communication at George Washington University. "Is someone going to kill Barack Obama because they went to a Palin rally? Probably not, and if they do it is more likely because they're crazy than because they heard someone tell them to do it at a Palin rally. It is dangerous in a bigger sense that it is bad for politics."