From a reader:

Jonah,
It sounds like Allen was reacting to more than just what was said. I’m a conservative Republican living in the Virginia suburbs and have been following the campaign closely. You have to understand that Webb’s nutroots people have been waging a nasty campaign on the web. They’ve theorized that Allen learned “macaca” at his mother’s knee, thereby imputing racism to her, and Webb’s various friendly websites have baldly, and repeatedly, called Allen a racist. Webb allies on the ‘net issued fliers with anti-Semitic caricatures of his primary opponent, Harris Miller, and Allen might be trying to tie that together for voters, but the Webb whispering campaign also illustrates the classic liberal attack against conservatives on race: race doesn’t matter to us, but we know it matters to you, so we’ll repeatedly, bizarrely, and obscenely call attention to it in the hopes you’ll react the way we think conservatives react to this stuff.
I agree that Allen’s handled it poorly. Imagine if he’d said, “My opponent and his allies seem supremely concerned with my mother’s character and her race. By saying my mother used racist language around the house and was ashamed of her race to the point she kept it hidden from me, they hope to make me look bad to the people of Virginia. I’m proud of my mother. I’m proud of the job she did in raising me and my siblings. She raised children of excellent character, and to do that she had to be of good character herself. I don’t care about her race, nor do I care about mine, and I frankly don’t understand why Jim Webb’s allies care so much. Jim, there are more important issues to consider. Why don’t we move to them?” Would’ve really stuck the knife in, and the fact that he couldn’t do something like this is informative.