Essential

McCain vs. the GOP Base

Town hall turns ugly.

Does the GOP have a mutiny on its hands? When John McCain defended Barack Obama against some of his town-hall audiences' more unsavory attacks last night—something critics had been beseeching him to do all week—the audience members began booing. McCain's statement that "Senator Obama is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States" earned jeers and cries of "terrorist" from the audience. When one woman said she heard Obama was an "Arab," McCain took the mic away and assured her that he wasn't. The dilemma for McCain: does he suppress the, er, passion of he base, or risk letting things get too ugly?