Mob Law (UPDATED with Video)

There's been a lot of discussion of the terrifying lynch mob mentality that has begun infesting John McCain presidential rallies (even Fox News is worried. [1] Nothing new, of course. Here's 1972, from NIXONLAND [2]:

Nixon finished up with a rally at the Nassau Coliseum. Entrance was by invitation only. But several dozen or so demonstrators managed to place themselves in the bleachers behind Nixon. "Stop the war! Stop the war!" they heckled. Security guards, cops, and ordinary spectators set upon them in a hail of fists and feet. Police dragged them across the cement. "Kill 'em!" one reporter recorded hearing. Young Voters for the President started chanting "Four more years!" "The Long Island campaign swing by the President was climaxed by an evening reminiscent of disruptions that once followed Gov. George Wallace," a reporter wrote. A younger reporter phoned in to his editors that it reminded him of the Third Reich, but his story was killed.

Here's 1964, from BEFORE THE STORM [3]:

No candidate's wife had taken such a tour without her husband before. But she knew her people needed to hear some hard truths. Her husband could not do the job if she wanted to: the assassination threat was too great. But Southerners, she knew, would never shoot a lady off her pedestal...

The speaker's platform - the caboose -would be taken up first by Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana for a round of courthouse-style introductions. "How many of you-all know what red-eye gravy is?" he would say. "Well, so do I, and so does Lyndon Johnson." And then - forty times that first day - the nation's Southern Bell-in-Chief mounted her pedestal, cleared her throat, looked out at the picket signs ("FLY AWAY LADY BIRD, HERE IN RICHMOND BARRY IS THE CAT'S MEOW"; "LYNDON, WE WILL BARRY YOU"; "BRINKMANSHIP IS BETTER THAN CHICKENSHIP"...), took in a few moments of "We Want Barry!" chants - and thrust her secret weapon into the air: a single, white-gloved hand. That usually was enough. If it wasn't she would drawl, "This is a campaign trip, and I would like to ask for your vote for both Johnsons" - so they knew they were insulting both Johnsons, not just the husband. She was a lady; one continued on pain of one's manhood.

She told her audience that "to this Democratic candidate and his wife, the South is a respected, valued, and beloved part of this country." She reeled off a list of what Democrats had done for Culpeper - the roads, the factories, the navy yards, the dams - and raised the specter of Republican soup lines. And she was never too shy to remind them how proud Democrats should be of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - leavening the remark with a joke: "You might not like all I am saying, but at least you understand the way ah'm sayin' it."

It was in South Carolina where the white gloves and sugared words finally failed Lady Bird Johnson. South Carolina air was now being paved over by Strom Thurmond's radio ads - 'A vote for Barry Goldwater is a vote to end judicial tyranny' - and the evangelism of true believers like the minister Bob Jones Jr., whose college refused to bow to any "agnostic or materialist accrediting association," and who had adopted for his independent campaign for Barry Goldwater the apparently defeatist slogan "Turn Back America, Turn Back - Only a Divine Miracle Can Save America Now."...

In Columbia only a maternal bark brought peace from the hecklers: "This is a country of many viewpoints. I respect your right to express your own. Now is my turn to express mine. Thank you." The next stop, Charleston, had been chosen by Lady Bird because it had given 57 percent to the Republicans in 1960. And as her train approached, the tough old port was taking on a menacing aspect that recalled Dallas in November of 1963. Whispers shuddered through town: a band was ready to strike up a "hot beat" to incite Negroes to riot as Lady Bird arrived. The local paper pleaded with its readers for "courtesy towards the First Lady," as Nixon had pleaded with Texans for a "courteous reception" for Kennedy in Dallas papers on November 22. Twenty-four merchants failed to receive an emergency injunction to stop a rally at their shopping mall. She entered at dusk. The space in front of the platform at the mall was monopolized by the massed forces of the local John Birch Society chapters--and their children, who bore signs reading "BLACK BIRD GO HOME"; "JOHNSON IS A COMMUNITY"; "JOHNSON IS A NIGGER-LOVER."

"Jobs and a better community...prosperity for Charleston...Polaris missile base...shipyard" - the words could be heard only intermittently for the wall of boos. Hale Boggs took the microphone and cried out in anguish: " This is reminiscent of Hitler! This is a Democratic gathering, not a Nazi gathering!"

Lady Bird and her entourage pressed on, shaken. In courtly Savannah, it was Johnson's seventeen-year-old daughter who was booed. That night the FBI made a yard-by-yard sweep of a seven-mile-long bridge that would convey the First Lady across a marshy expanse in north Florida...

That's just how the conservatives roll. The striking thing—Fox shows this—is that we may be facing a backlash similar to 1964: shame at the extremism of John McCain's conservative supporterss may well be cutting into his strength even among Republicans.

But not these Republicans: