Creating a mob mentality

A lot has been written about the anger and ugliness McCain ("terrorist"), and even more so, Palin seem to be whipping up at their campaign stops ("kill him").

Dana Milbank weighs in today with a report of more ugliness from the crowd at Palin's Clearwater FL rally.

....Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Republican's used to take great offense to Democrats strong dislike of Bush but I'd love to see someone point to examples of this kind of "unhinged" -- to borrow a word from Milbank -- behavior at any of the Kerry / Edwards rallies in 2004.