George Felix Allen. There are two ways that public figures are called with three names, one is if they are considered presidential – FDR, JFK, LBJ. The other is if they are considered criminal. Since George Felix Allen's "Maccaca moment," the first has seemed, unlikely, even hardened conservatives likeGeorge F. Will admit that Allen's star has fallen fast since then. That incident involved a staffer from the Webb campaign who was videotaping Allen's appearances, looking for embarrassing moments. Little did he realize that he was about to become that embarrassing moment. The word, a racial slur from French North Africa, would not leap to the lips of most Americans – but George Felix Allen's mother was French, and from North Africa.

What damaged Allen even more than the word, however, was the series of attempts to lie about it. That he called a Virginia native an outsider, when Allen himself is a transplant, showed that Allen's instincts were towards prejudice. That he was unable to put the story to rest shows that Allen was a hamfisted politician who did not know how to deal with either the media, or his own gaffes.

Hot on the heels of this blunder came a series of questions about George Felix Allen's past – including assertions that he had been in trouble with the law for stuffing a deer head in a mailbox as a college student, and more serious allegations that he had spit on his wife. Demands that he open his divorce records were met with stony silence by George Felix Allen's campaign.

Enter Mike Stark, US Marine corps veteran, University of Virginia law student – and blogger known for calling up hard core right wing talk radio hosts and asking hard questions. In an environment where ABC News has openly announced that it is going to come down hard on "left wing celebrities" and no longer give them "a free pass," even as it gives free passes to hard right wing agitprop such as "The Path to 9/11," and cannot seem to cram enough right wing viewpoint on its news shows, and where Air America has been the target of an advertising boycott by major corporations – Stark's one man campaign to get talk radio hosts too come out of their media bubble and answer questions is what used to be the hallmark of, dare we say it, journalism. He decided he was going to ask a question of George Felix Allen. As a Virginia voter, it seemed to him to be his right to ask a question of a candidate for federal office, one which the old media seemed to be avoiding asking, and one which the candidate was certainly avoiding answering.

If this seems small, remember that Allen had attacked his opponent, former Secretary of the Navy, for racy scenes in Webb's commercial fiction. Since the sauce was already on the shelf, Mike Stark decided to see what happened when George Felix Allen got a gander of it.

The videotape from the event tells the story in a few short seconds – Mike got out his question – in a tone no louder than any reporter chasing an uncooperative subject – whether on the steps to The Hill or the steps of a courthouse – and was immediately attacked by three large men clearly providing security for the Allen event. They slammed him around and then wrestled him to the ground.

The video shows no sign of Mike Stark being disruptive, heckling, or being threatening. It shows no sign of menacing gestures, reaching for a weapon, or launching himself forward. The pictures tell one story, but George Felix Allen and his campaign, true to their Maccaca form, told a very different one.

First he was "a protester," but there is no sign of that, Mike isn't carrying a handmade sign, he's dressed normally. Then it was pushed out that he was a "heckler," this was the version picked up by CNN and run late yesterday afternoon. However, even as CNN was running the Allen spin as news, the story was changing under their feet – using the videotape as evidence, Mike Stark filed charges, and the local sheriff opened an investigation and admitted that there would be warrants issued. Now Allen's campaign is putting out the story that Mike Stark is "a stalker" and that they were waiting to attack him.

The law is fairly clear, the individuals in question were not deputized agents of the law. They did not clearly revoke Mike Stark's license to be at a public event before attacking him. They had no legitimate fear of bodily harm, nor were they preventing imminent bodily harm. They used far more than necessary force. In short, they did not have the legal right to assault Mr. Stark, even if they had been associated with the campaign. So far the Allen campaign has called them merely "supporters" even though one is a long time GOP activist in Northern Virginia.

Allen's contention – that this was legitimate security – is not supported by the clear video evidence, nor is the law on his side either. The old saying goes that if you have the facts, pound on the facts, if you have the law, pound on the law, and if you have neither the law, nor the facts, pound on the table. For about 4 hours yesterday, that is what Allen's strategy was – convict Mr. Stark in the court of public opinion, with a media that was willing to repeat, uncritically and without asking any questions of anyone – without even watching the video – Allen's version of events.

However, the spook show of Halloween night turned to cold rationality on All Saints Day. The local radio stations in the Washington DC area began running a far more balanced story, every half an hour during drive time. Mike Stark was interviews, and the story broke both in the progressive partisan press, and in the broadcast media very differently. Later in the morning Mr. Stark went on Air America to tell his version of events, and vowed to press charges against the people who assaulted him.

This is not, as the record shows, an isolated incident for George Felix Allen, and up until this election, his belligerence served him well politically. There is, as Kevin Phillips noted in his work on wars in American history, a deep strain of Scotch-Irish pugnacity in Virginia. People may forget that before Lynch was a verb, he was a person, and he was from this cultural region of the world. Having doubled fists was not a mark of disgrace, but of honor and willingness to put your body where your beliefs were.

However, Allen has shown that he is not a man of honor and valor, but merely California wannabe with a history of violence. Ironically, or fittingly, it was by asking about George Felix Allen's history of marital discord, that Mr. Stark evoked a response which went beyond the bounds of the rough and tumble of politics.

This election is, ultimately, a referendum, not only on Iraq, nor even on Iraq and the economy. Nor even still on George W. Bush and the rubberstamp Republican Congress. It is, instead, a referendum on violence as the means of solving the problems of politics. America is still refighting the division of the 1960's – when many people believe that just coming down harder on protesters and students would have quelled dissent, and allowed America to win the war with "unity" at home. It was an echo of this belief that Allen played upon in the series of openly misleading, if not outright dishonest, versions of the attack on Mr. Stark. The solutions pushed by the GOP, big military, the death penalty, harsh enforcement, incarceration, and finally war in Iraq, all stem from the same theory that the best way to deal with anything is to "kick butt and take names."

George Felix Allen has been an enthusiastic evangelist for this viewpoint – having said at an earlier campaign event that he and is supporters would have fun "knccking their soft teeth down their whiney throats." Like the Enron "Deathstar" memo, or Trent Lotts' comments on segregationism as being the better way politically, it is the kind of honest expression of naked hostility which goes over very will in a pumped up locker room environment, but less well when exposed to the public.

The race had been braking awa from George Felix Allen for the last week – he could not overcome the perception of being a loose canon with no manners. This incident is very likely to seal his defeat, and make him the next ex-Senator from Virginia, having ridden in on George Bush's coattails in 2000, it may well be that he will be part of Bush's fall from the saddle. Because while Americans like men of action, they do not like people with a history of violence. It may well have wider reprocussions, because George Bush and Karl Rove have been pushing John Kerry's joke gone awry as the sign that the Democrats don't really like veterans – it is strange that after a decade of Bushism that the GOP wants to make the campaign about a poorly worded remark. But a bad joke may not have the legs to overcome a Rodney Kingesque blunder by thug-like GOP operatives, an act which conjures up the tactics of totalitarian states in beating their political opposition to the ground.