It’s Oc.to.ber.
The conservative Judicial Confirmation Network is running a TV ad tying Obama to Reverend Wright, William Ayers and, of course, Tony Rezko. It is, I think, a sign of things to come:
Choosing the right justices is critical to America,” the ad says. “We don’t know who Barack Obama would choose but we know this:
“He chose as one of his first financial backers a slumlord now convicted on 16 counts of corruption. Obama chose as an associate a man who helped to bomb the Pentagon and said he ‘didn’t do enough.’ And Obama chose as his pastor a man who has blamed America for the 9/11 attacks.
“Obama chose to associate with these men, while voting against these men (Justices Alito and Roberts).”
As others have noted, October has arrived. This thing will get dirty - McCain et al. do not have any other choice. They will have to fight, and they will have to present Obama as a hypocrite, associate of criminals and terrorists, and big government liberal. Of course their job will be made more difficult by the MSM’s unwillingness to report about anything damaging to Obama, but it’s made more easy as well; the McCain campaign and its allies will not have to lie much, they just have to point out the facts time and again.
McCain is affiliated with a pastor who has said that god struck the US with 9/11 for not mistreating homosexuals even more. Palin’s hubbie was a seccesionist (and that’s probably not the only core tenet of the party he was a member of). Ayers was allowed back into society and has paid his dues, and voters have already seen this when the media WAS bringing this up all the time, and it didn’t stick. Those are facts too.
Hopefully voters will slap McCain for HIS hipocrisy and lack of a plan for America, and his unfavorables will go up more.
Obama, Rezko, Nesbitt, et-al… (Chicago "Housing program")
…"I’m not against Barack Obama," said Willie J.R. Fleming, an organizer with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and a former public housing resident. "What I am against is some of the people around him."…
…"Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: "I hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his involvement with that community."..
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/?page=full
admin: I will let it slide for now, but please see item #4 of the comments policy before commenting again
That is precisely the thing that still gives me pause about Obama — not him, but some of the people around him. Unlike most others, however, I’m not talking about the pointless and stupid pseudo-scandals like Rezko and Ayers. I am talking about Michael Moore, Barbara Lee, ACORN, Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, Barney Frank, and the groups using state offices to "target" anti-Obama speakers in Missouri and other states.
I think Obama is relatively benign and I prefer him to McCain. I am concerned, however, not about Obama associates that are in the past, but with Obama associates who will be empowered by him in the future. In 2004, I swallowed my distaste for MoveOn.org and John Kerry’s pathetic candidacy to vote for him anyway in reaction to a Bush administration that was already beginning to wallow in its incoherence. So far, I think it most likely that I will have to take a similar path regarding Obama — I like him more than Kerry but the Moveon.org wing of Democratic Party politics has gotten far worse — but it is still cause for worry.
I think there are quite a lot of moderates like myself in the same position. If only McCain/Palin could stop fixating on utter nonsense and buckle down with some serious policy analysis from a moderate/conservative perspective, there might be an opening for persuasion. But the clock is almost run out on the McCain version of the Kerry campaign.
Those past associations exacerbate that concern though, no? To me, what Rezko and Ayers and Wright and Pfleger tell us about Obama is that he chooses to work with unsavory individuals who have political agendas that are far more radical than most Americans (and probably than Obama himself) rather than marginalizing people like that.
I mean, I realize that past performance is no guarantee of future results, but on what other basis can you judge him?
I just don’t agree that merely associating with people or even working with them on a limited range of issues constitutes "past performance". Like I explained earlier, I worked closely with an avowed socialist in establishing and running an educational organization, but I don’t think that means my "past performance" is that of a socialist.
Actually, being as how this is in academia, it is more likely that he would be in danger of being tainted by his association with me. That would be ironic and funny, but still unfair.
If the educational foundation that Obama and Ayers were both members of produced a specific document recommending specific policies, then Obama is accountable politically for the CONTENT of those recommendations. That would be the appropriate place to direct criticism, in my mind, rather than at a vague set of allegations of “associations”.
Also, McCain and Palin both have some scary “associations” too, if we wanted to go that way. I choose not to. I don’t care if some pro-McCain minister is an anti-Catholic loon or if Palin’s husband belonged to a radical right-wing third party. There is very little real information to be found in such allegations, because the evidence gleaned from an “association” is always purely subjective in its meaning — the presumptions going in completely determine the judgment coming out of the analysis. That is a waste of our time when we have very serious policy issues confronting the next President.
Well, what I’m getting at with the associations is different than your personal situation because you’re not running for political office.
It seems to me that Ayer’s past criminal and morally repugnant actions are dismissed by many people today because a) they happened a long time ago and b) the Chicago establishment has accepted him and absolved him.
By becoming involved with Ayers’ foundation, Obama is complicit in that ‘pardoning’, and that’s simply not acceptable to me. Just as it won’t be acceptable if he allows people like Barney Frank to continue lying to the American people about his guilt in the subprime mortgage scam, or allows Soros and MoveOn to undermine the political culture with their tactics, etc.
And as far as documents produced, have you read the summaries by Kurtz, or Tom Maguire on JustOneMinute, or Steve Diamond on Global Labor and Politics? Or followed the money trail of the diversions of the Annenberg grant money to ACORN and Klonsky’s small school initiative.
Steve Diamond has an archive of direct source materials about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the City Journal has also had some good articles.
As I explained in my latest post, Christine, with only a few exceptions (i.e. people like Larry Johnson who seem outright deranged with their anti-Obama theories to the point even of manufacturing false evidence) I do not condemn those who come to a different reading of the evidence than I do. There is a reason my original post was titled "Why I Give Obama a Pass on Ayers"…
OK, fair enough, Jason- I was just trying to get you to think it through from a different angle though, because it seems that you’re viewing it through the lens of your personal experience and I think the fact that you aren’t running for office is a substantive difference between your associations and Obama’s.
I don’t agree. Assuming guilt by association is just as pernicious and unfair towards a candidate for political office as it is towards a candidate for any other type of job.
And if I should eventually decide to run for office, are you really arguing that THEN it would be ok to accuse me of being a socialist for having associated with a socialist?
My current angle still seems right to me. Obama gets a pass on Ayers from me because I think to do otherwise would legitimize a standard that is unfair and even dangerous.