McCain Attacked as "Warmonger" at Obama Rally

This Caucus story makes it look like Ed Schultz's slur of John McCain as a "warmonger" is exceptional, out-of-the-blue, in fact.

But, frankly, mainstream Democratic Party supporters are essentially indistinguishable from the party's hardline radical base, particularly those found in the antiwar netroots.

Here's the background:

On the air, Ed Schultz, a liberal talk show host based in Fargo, N.D., is well-known for his blunt criticisms of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. But Mr. Schultz, a fervent supporter of Senator Barack Obama, may have gone too far late Friday when he called Senator John McCain “a warmonger.”

Mr. Schultz, whose program is syndicated nationally, made the remarks while revving up a group of Obama supporters at a $100-a-head fund raiser at the North Dakota Democratic Party’s convention in Grand Forks. As soon as the Republican National Committee got word of the attack, it issued a statement lambasting Mr. Schultz and calling on Mr. Obama to repudiate the characterization of the presumptive Republican nominee for President.

It's obviously difficult to corral potentially inflammatory rhetoric coming from fired up supporters, but such talk should certainly not be unexpected, given the implacable hostility to the administration's war among those on the antiwar left:

As his position as the Democratic front-runner solidifies, Mr. Obama has stepped up his attacks on Mr. McCain’s views and policies. But he frequently prefaces and tempers those criticisms, as he did Friday in Indiana and North Dakota and Saturday in Montana, by calling Mr. McCain “a genuine war hero who deserves our respect” and making clear that the differences between the two men are political, not personal.

The Republican primary was “nothing more than a contest to see who was best qualified to run for George Bush’s third term,” Mr. Obama said in a speech to the North Dakota Democrats on Friday evening. “John McCain won that contest, and now he’s offering four more years of the very same policies that failed us for the last eight.”

“We can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to carry on George Bush’s can’t-do, won’t-do, won’t-even-try style of politics,” he also said. “We are a better country than that.”

A better country than what?

One that will fight - with very few allies, if necessary - to uphold the pinciples of international law embodied in the U.N. Charter, as well as the specific resolutions on Iraqi violations of the world body's disarmement regime.

Is there a better country? I don't think so.

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