Election Campaign Insecurity

An incident at George W. Bush's campaign stop in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, yesterday showed just how nasty and vicious Bush and Richard Cheney and their supporters are - as if Cheney's earlier comment this week about a terrorist attack on America being a certainty if John Kerry were elected President weren't enough. A few hecklers disrupted Bush's campaign appearance at an industrial park and they were quickly rounded up by security and evicted. True, this was an appearance on private property meant for the employees of the company he visited, but even if it had been a public, open-air rally, anti-Bush hecklers still wouldn't have been allowed. Unlike John Kerry, whose campaign appearances are open to everyone who wishes to stop by and who debates the hecklers in his audience, Bush makes people sign a loyalty pledge before they can enter a rally.

So what's the big deal? Well, this incident was noteworthy in that one heckler, a female antiwar protester, was grabbed from the back by the hair by a Bush supporter. The overzealous Bush backer wasn't some crude, greasy factory worker - he was a well-dressed middle-aged man. There's a picture of the incident in today's New York Times. If these are the kind of people who aim to put Bush back in office - men who see nothing wrong with physically assaulting young women - I weep for this nation if they succeed! ]:-(