Offensive Obama Sign In McCain Campaign Office

The John McCain campaign off in Pompano Beach, Florida hung a poster that compared Barack Obama to Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini. The first complaint was issued by a Republican.

The issue was raised by Jeffrey Sanders of Boynton Beach, who said he saw the sign Thursday when he stopped to pick up tickets for today's McCain rally at Florida International University.

"To label someone as the next Hitler is beyond outrageous [and] offensive. And it needs to be addressed. And if Barack Obama does the same thing to McCain I would expect the same reaction," he said. "That was not American."

Sanders, 23, is a registered Republican. The Palm Beach Community College student said he is thinking about voting for Obama.

Young Southern conservatives are much more racially tolerate. College Republicans may be a farm system for future Republican leadership. However, many Twenty-something Republicans have no desire to fight the sixties cultural issues, again. The problem is the elder Republicans are stuck on Vietnam and the civil rights issues. Democrats lost Southern elections (but saved the country) by winning the Vietnam and civil rights debate. Southern Democrats were wrong about Vietnam (Lyndon Johnson) and civil rights (Richard Russell.) Republicans used resentment towards the changes in America to pull Democratic voters into the Republican Party. Guns, religion and abortion were used to pull more Southern voters.

The GOP gained a strangle hold on the South. The side effect is Southern Republican activists viewed Democrats as anti-Christian and anti-American. The last three Democratic presidents were Southerners. The only way Southerners would vote a a Democrat for president is if he was one of them.

There should be no surprise that a sign linking Obama to famous distators hangs in a McCain campaign office. The mainstream Southern Republican activists attitude is any Democratic presidential hates America. The warming signs have been there for those that bothered to pay attention. Fox News and Ann Coulter exist to tell these conservatives what they want to hear. There is no money to be made without an audience. Ask local stage actors and musicians.

The GOP has used racism and faux patriotism to garner votes. A black presidential candidate leading, in the polls, is a testiment to the need for the GOP to become more inclusive. Republicans have pushed to curtain gay rights. In 2008, there is a record number of gay and lesbian candidates. Linda Ketner is running in South Carolina's 1st District.

However, neither Ketner nor her opponent, four-term Republican incumbent Henry Brown, has raised her sexual orientation as an election issue, and Ketner's campaign has turned down requests for interviews that would highlight the topic.

"She happens to be gay -- she's not a gay candidate," said Tony Snell of the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement.

"Throughout the South, there's softening on the gay issue," he said. "It's becoming more of a non-issue as we look at the economy, we look at the war. ... People are going to go beyond their old biases."

What we seeing is blowback to years of negative GOP attacks. Unfortunately, these shameful tactics should have stopped with the disgraced Richard Nixon.