Crooks and Liars ran this yesterday, and I couldn’t let it go unnoticed.

At one of his own town halls last night, John McCain took a moment to tell his supporters that Barack Obama is not the slavering Librul Terrist monster of their racist, paranoid nightmares …

… and the crowed booed McCain for defending the enemy.

It’s utterly fucking terrifying. And the video is made even more unsettling by the fact that we can’t see the woman’s face as she reacts to McCain’s reassurances that Obama is not “an Arab” — she just sputters “he’s not? He’s not?” as though she’s collapsing inside.

Watch the clip. This is what O’Reilly and Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing noise machine have wrought — millions of people who believe anything that fits their existing prejudices and respond with unthinking rage when those beliefs are challenged. And right up until yesterday’s refutation, McCain was riding those slurs and insinuations for everything they were worth.

I’m glad to see he’s trying to claw thing back to more reasonable ground, even if it’s an obvious attempt to restore his standing with center-right Republicans now that it’s clear the base alone can’t win the election. Or possibly he’s just rediscovered his sense of shame. (Josh Marshall has some thoughts on that at Talking Points Memo, along with more video of that town hall.)

In any case, John McCain has finally come out and said, on the record, that Barack Obama is not a secret Muslim out to destroy America from within. That should give the two of them some common ground at the next debate.