In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed "treason!" during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.
"[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are 'air raiding villages and killing civilians,'" Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. "I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom."
Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled "treason!" loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.
Here's the video:
At a McCain rally on Monday, television stations caught audio of a crowd member calling Obama a "terrorist," while Dana Milbank reported that "[o]ne Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, 'Sit down, boy.'" Also on Monday, at a Palin rally, one member of the audience yelled, "Kill him!"
During Tuesday's event, Palin continued her frontal assault on Obama's character by noting Bill Ayers after repeating a debunked lie about the Illinois Democrat's tax record that even McCain himself has stopped using.
Referencing an explanation put forward by David Axelrod on Monday -- that Obama was not aware of Ayers's past when they first met in Chicago -- Palin mocked Obama's foreign policy knowledge, saying: "And since he got called up on his plans to meet unconditionally with terror state leaders like [Iranian President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will now claim that he was unaware of his radical background?"
Palin's political shot was effective with the Republican faithful, drawing a deep, collective "ooooh." As substance, it was less than edifying. Obama has repeatedly made clear that, of course, he finds Ahmadinejad's views to be "hateful and anti-Semitic," most recently on the occasion of the Iranian President's visit to the UN.
Later, in the tax policy section of her speech, Palin managed to repeat a thoroughly debunked claim about Obama's voting record that even McCain himself has stopped using.
"He voted 94 times for higher taxes. Even on middle class -- hard working everyday families across this great nation -- making $42,000 a year," she said.
As FactCheck.org noted in August, McCain's campaign originally claimed Obama voted to raise taxes on families making $32,000 a year, but have since changed their tax ads to say that Obama's vote would impact individuals making $42,000 per year -- not families as Palin repeated today. Still, FactCheck called the new McCain ad script "better, but still deceptive" -- a standard that Palin failed to meet this morning.