Several critics, most of them conservatives, have complained that Game Change, the new HBO movie made from the best-selling 2008 presidential campaign book, portrays Sarah Palin as profoundly stupid.  And it does.  Those critics have also complained that the picture sometimes portrays John McCain and his top advisers as deeply craven.  It does that, too. And then there’s the fact that Game Change, the movie, focuses on a negative portrayal of Palin while ignoring the dramatic and divisive primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that made up the biggest part of the book.  So there’s a lot of bias to go around — not a surprise in a picture made by the same Hollywood writer-and-director team that produced Recount, the pro-Gore HBO version of the 2000 election.

But perhaps the strongest bias in Game Change is not about any particular politician, or even its choice of characters.  At its core, the movie’s message is that the Republican base is filled with hatred, racism, and xenophobia.  In Game Change, the McCain-Palin decision to attack Obama for his ties to the former 1960s radical Bill Ayers — even as the GOP ticket stayed away from Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright — brings out the ugliness in the hearts of Republican voters.  And those Republican voters are truly awful people.