Who's smearing whom?

[Tigermike 3,046]

Who's smearing whom?

By: James Kirchick

July 1, 2008 05:07 PM EST

The only obstacle between Barack Obama and the presidency is the mountain of smears that will no doubt come his way. That’s the narrative that Obama supporters — and his swooning chroniclers in the mainstream media — would have us believe.

Obama himself set up a website, fighthesmears.com, correcting some e-mail chain letters that allege he “can’t produce his birth certificate,” is “secretly a Muslim” and that he “won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.” In May, Newsweek published a cover story confirming the Obama campaign’s fears, declaring that “the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968.”

Writers Evan Thomas and Richard Wolfe concluded that the 2008 presidential election will be no different. “It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as ‘the other’ — as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.”

But has it been a “sure bet?”

Not really. Thus far, no one with any serious affiliation to John McCain's campaign has resorted to the alleged “scare” tactics in which Republicans — and, apparently, only Republicans — have been perfecting since Richard Nixon was first elected. On the contrary, if the past few months have showed us anything, it’s that the Obama campaign is the one dealing in crude smears.

There have been only two incidents in which people officially associated with McCain have done anything approaching what Thomas and Wolfe predicted those dastardly, conniving Republicans would inevitably do. In February, a conservative talk radio host speaking at a McCain rally made reference to “Barack Hussein Obama.” McCain immediately condemned the statement, leading the embittered and embarrassed professional yacker to complain that McCain “threw me under the bus.” The only other smear-worthy episode occurred in March, when the McCain campaign suspended a low-level aide who provided a link on his Twitter account to a video featuring the rants of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Heavy stuff, to be sure.

Contrast the absence of smears from the McCain camp with some of the outlandish remarks made by high-ranking Obama supporters. In April, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV said that because McCain “was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet,” and “was long gone when they hit,” the Arizona senator who spent five and a half years in a Vietcong tiger cage having his arms repeatedly broken didn’t really understand the carnage of war. “What happened when [the missiles] get to the ground?” Rockefeller asked a crowd at an Obama rally. “He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.” That the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller would impugn the wartime experience of John McCain is especially rich, given that the only “battle” Rockefeller has seen is when he hunts wild game at his 80-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Rockefeller’s smear was the first salvo in a pattern of attacks meant to insinuate that McCain’s Vietnam experience not only shouldn’t count as meaningful “experience,” but rendered him psychologically unfit for presidential office. In May, Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin said of McCain, “Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.” Over the weekend, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said that McCain is “untested and untried,” and elaborated that, “I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.” Clark, you may remember, ran for president in 2004 on his record as a career military officer, so his comment, which he has not retracted, was not just morally offensive but self-discrediting.

The smears didn’t stop there. On Monday, Obama foreign policy adviser Rand Beers unfavorably compared McCain’s POW experience with “the members of the Senate who were in the ground forces or who were ashore in Vietnam,” and who “have a very different view of Vietnam and the cost ... than John McCain does because he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.”

It’s curious how anyone could argue that a man with such visceral understanding of the capacity for what America’s enemies will do to our men and women in uniform doesn’t fully appreciate the cost of war. But even more troubling is the unmistakable pattern of these smears, all of them unsubtly alleging that McCain is an unhinged, mentally unstable warmonger who would deploy soldiers capriciously because he hasn’t truly experienced the horrors of ground battle. Indeed, the claims of these four men — and the short period of time in which they were all uttered — are so similar in tone that one would be foolish not to at least consider the possibility they were coordinated by the Obama campaign.

Nevertheless, the fears of Obama supporters that their candidate lies eternally vulnerable to GOP smears exists only in their fevered imaginations. The evidence of dirty Republican tricks has been utterly absent this campaign season. And if anyone has tried to smear Barack Obama in the way that Thomas, Wolfe and other Democratic partisans allege, it was not the Republican National Committee, but rather Hillary Rodham Clinton and her surrogates. In February, the Drudge Report claimed that the Clinton campaign circulated photos of Obama in a traditional East African turban and robe, with the message that the images showed him “dressed.” Asked if there was any truth to the smear that Obama is a Muslim, she infamously replied, “As far as I know,” it wasn’t the case. After the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, she said the results showed that "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.”

The belief that “the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968” is a comforting salve for Democrats. After all, it’s much easier for them to demonize conservatives than consider that the reason for their electoral defeats may lie with liberal ideas. Please don’t take that as a "smear.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uui...0A118B64440DF50

[WinCrimson 61]

McCain doesn't have to. It'd be political suicide for him to trot out that garbage because it would finally be analyzed and rightfully declared as bunk by the national media.

His minions on foot and keyboard do just fine, in fact. Well, I hate to label them as his. Conservatives have been churning out those ridiculous chain e-mails since the birth of the internet. I have no idea why they find them to be so amusing and blindly automatically accept them as gospel.

I do have to confess they can be hilarious in their lies and distortions. My personal favorite has to be the claim that the state Dem parties in Arkansas and West Virginia were trying to ban the Bible. That takes the cake. Obama being sworn in on the Koran running a close second.

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The belief that “the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968” is a comforting salve for Democrats. After all, it’s much easier for them to demonize conservatives than consider that the reason for their electoral defeats may lie with liberal ideas. Please don’t take that as a "smear.”

Thanks for playing WC.

[WinCrimson 61]

Republicans have been much, much better politicians/campaigners than Democrats in the post-Kennedy era. Sure, they've suffered some defeats, but have they ever tossed a McGovern, Mondale, or Dukakis out there? While I think the majority of their candidates have been weak, I can see how many would accept them.

Take W, for example. Who ever thought that formerly coked out doofus could ever be President of the United States? Yet, his predecessor's infidelity and the invention of "compassionate conservatism" line was enough to put him in the Oval Office. After all, that Connecticut cowboy turned Exeter Prep schoolboy turned Major League Baseball team owner would make a fine President just like his his Diddy! He's a God fearing, blue collar wearing ranch man despite the fact that his policies often stray from Christian principles and he's lived the life of Riley since birth.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this and I realize that the Democrats are far from clean on the issue. It just seems like you guys are more vocal about your ideas and more willing to express them. I don't mean to offend anyone by saying this, but this should come as no surprise seeing that many on your side are fighting for their God and their region. The fact of the matter is that it's critical for Obama to fight these lies because the media is showing that they're obviously more than willing to allow them to be perpetuated. It just seems as if some of your candidates think that all they have/need to do to win is throw out campaign ads of Pelosi, Hillary, and Ted Kennedy to win elections. "Liberal!" this, "liberal!" that. If Democrats are elected, guns and the Bible will be outlawed, gays will overtake the neighborhood, and we won't get to start any more fun wars!!!1

I rambled. Sh*t. Your turn again.

[WinCrimson 61]

For instance, when Obama is elected and the Democratic majority increased, we're going to be forced to live like cave men.

1-800-GEICO

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For instance, when Obama is elected and the Democratic majority increased, we're going to be forced to live like cave men.

1-800-GEICO

That is the dims energy policy. But they will be nice cavemen and driving Hybrids. And drinking $4 lattes at Starbucks. Oh Lord, what will they do with Starbucks closing 600 stores in the US?

[WinCrimson 61]

Know that I don't care at all, but the Starbucks line further solidifies my point. Very few in your party lack a Ph.D. in creating straw man arguments. We were discussing the political parties' misgivings on plausible energy policy and you introduce cavemen, hybrid cars, and lattes.

If you go to Starbucks, you must be a leftist, anti-American, out-of-touch elitist who doesn't know what it feels like to put in a hard days work. Right? Maybe because I do go there often and fit none of the stereotypes that it strikes me as funny.

Since you mentioned it, 600 stores closing really does bleaux. But I'm not at all surprised. In Tuscaloosa alone, we have 4 stores including 3 on the same block. For a city of 100k, is that really necessary? Not to mention the several other already existing coffee shops that are not affiliated with Starbucks.

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You know what strikes me as funny? Dims really don't have a sense of humor. None what so ever.

There was no strawan argument. It was an attempt at humor, that ovbviously balled up your panties as it went over your head.

[WinCrimson 61]

That form of humor has been written in stone as everyday conservative talking points. That's all I'm saying.

And I specifically stated that I, personally, don't care. Sure, I wish modern day politics didn't rely so heavily on labels and stereotypes, but I guess that's just the name of the game.

For the record, I'm not an uptight guy. I can laugh at a joke at Obama's expense as easily as I can at one directed at McCain. The same applies to UA and AU. The only thing I don't like is how this style of rhetoric has largely replaced an political philosophy. Digs on coffee shops have replaced any serious political discussion and while Republicans probably employ this tool more often than Democrats, blame can be handed to both. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly no political expert and couldn't lay out in detail where McCain or Bush and I differ on energy policy, but I do hope that by the time I actually do have the time (thank you, AUN) to really try to educate myself on politics and government, that the climate for discussion will be drastically different than what it is in the current day. We live in a time where it's not all that taboo for the President's face to don Hitler's mustache or see veterans' military service denigrated for political gain. It's unfortunate, really.