March 16, 2008 - March 22, 2008

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"You helped this happen..."

Filed under: John McCain

If the Rev. Wright videos are going to be bouncing around the ether and onto our television screens for the foreseeable future, might as well get this one in the mix: Rev. Jerry Falwell in conversation on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson--just two days after the 911 attacks and one day before Wright's now famous "chickens coming home to roost" remarks.

Here you go:

And here's a transcript:

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results ... God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur

John McCain famously called Falwell and Robertson "agents of intolerance." As the shoe-in nominee for the Republican Party in 2008, he's said he no longer believes that to be true, and even delivered the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University last year.

Like it or not, Barack Obama will no doubt be answering for Wright's words for as long as his campaign lasts. Will McCain have to answer for his pastor connections?

Stephen Colbert handled this issue with typical efficiency this week...

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at March 21, 2008 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

 

The Speech

Filed under: Barack Obama

Much has been made of Barack Obama's oratory and rhetorical brilliance, his ability to paint even the driest of dry policy proposals with a coat of rhythmic, baritone elegance.

Implicit in all of this passive-aggressive fawning—at least that on behalf of his detractors, particularly that smug sock-puppet Paul Begala—was the idea that beneath all his flash and dazzle was a scared-shitless darkie lacking the necessary "experience" and "substance" to carry the torch effectively for Whitey. Senator John McCain, the crusty sun-baked cracker from Arizona, even had the balls to label Obama's parlance "platitudes" in between his own shameless bromides about Lady Liberty’s altruistic mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” around the globe— a task presumably carried out while perched on a magical, pixie-dust sprinkled Unicorn flanked by a benevolent bald eagle on one side, and a visibly aroused, blood-thirsty Uncle Sam on the other.

Like many other closet-idealists, I avoided writing about Barack Obama or discussing the man in polite company for simple fear that my expression would devolve into the kind of starry-eyed, bullshit-reeking pottage better lampooned than spouted. Praising Obama with unfettered fervor, I knew, would succeed only in outing me as yet another cultish Obama fanatic and, what's more, would likely convince whomever I was conversing with that “this Obama guy” was not to be trusted, what with this “frothing-at-the-mouth asshole” supporting him.

But after Tuesday’s speech—which Obama penned himself—there’s no need for me or any other talking primate to sing his praises. There’s no need to point out that this speech will likely go down as the most poised, intellectually honest, and honorable campaign monologue ever to be uttered in the history of human folly.

That's because it speaks for itself.

Posted by Matt Snyders at March 20, 2008 1:12 PM | Comments (1)

 

Ohio reporter mistakes PR flack for Hillary Clinton

Filed under: Media

Reporters don't get much more boneheaded than John Goodall of Ohio's Tribune Chronicle. According to a correction published by the paper today:

Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson’s staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley.

It appears as though the newspaper has pulled the content off its website, but you can find a cache version here.

Among the quotes falsely attributed to Hillary Clinton:

‘‘It was great. We had an unbelievable turnout,’’ the presidential candidate said of the Canfield session. ‘‘There were 85 people in that small office.’’

Clinton said residents voiced their views on jobs, taxes, energy costs and the local “brain drain.” They were very concerned about the economy in the Mahoning Valley, she noted. ‘‘He’s holding these sessions because these are tough economic times,’’ Clinton, D-N.Y., said of Wilson.

‘‘Think of these as town hall meetings where you do more of the talking than I do,’’ Wilson said of residents. ‘‘Many of these sessions are scheduled over lunch. Pack a lunch bag, please join me and tell me your stories.’’

/Hat-tip Romenesko

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 19, 2008 3:17 PM | Comments (0)

 

Kinky politican sex makes the world go 'round.

Filed under: Sex

It must be spring. The politician sex stories are rolling in.

We all know about former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who allegedly spent more on prostitutes than the median American household makes in a year. But like all tumultuous narrative events, these sex stories come in threes.

Guess what else comes in threes? The McGreeveys. Remember Jim McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey forced to come out during his administration due to an illicit extramarital relationship? Turns out he and his wife had regular three-way sex with his driver, something they called the "Friday Night Special" (she denies this, but McGreevey and the driver say it happened).

The former aide, Teddy Pedersen, told the New York Post and New Jersey's Star-Ledger he began having threesomes with the McGreeveys -- a routine "hard-core consensual sex orgy" they called the "Friday Night Special" -- in the late 1990s during Dina and Jim's courtship, and that the trysts continued after the couple's marriage in 2000, the papers reported online Sunday.

The most boring of this trifecta is your garden-variety affairs apparently undertaken by both Patersons during a rocky patch in their coupling. Yawn. But this third example is another invocation of the rare but politically deadly "governor jinx". Is this a burgeoning movement among governors? Trend story, anyone?

Someone needs to start following Tim Pawlenty around, just in case.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at March 18, 2008 10:43 AM | Comments (2)

 

Bush: At least one legacy to be glad for?

Filed under: National Republicans

While Pawlenty is spending an awful lot of time angling for the VP slot, The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg, as discussed last week, is pushing the McCain/Rice ticket.

What Hertzberg also did is raise a legacy issue for which critics of President Bush--and perhaps even what Hertzberg calls the Republican Party's "hardened racists and incorrigible misogynists"--may be hesitant to hand him:

...a kind word for George W. Bush may be in order. By appointing first Colin Powell and then Rice to the most senior job in the Cabinet, a job of global scope, Bush changed the way millions of white Americans think about black public officials. This may turn out to the most positive legacy of his benighted Presidency.

You may buy it and you may not, but it is a tempting invitation to put aside, if only for a moment, much more evident legacy issues in favor of a comprehensive look at eight years of the letter W.

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at March 17, 2008 4:30 PM | Comments (3)

 

Why it is a terrible time to be a Republican

Filed under: Media

It's a good time to be a Republican, MinnPost's Steve Berg asserted on Friday. Sure, he allows, the economy's in the toilet and George W. Bush's approval ratings are below 20 in some polls. Indeed, conventional wisdom holds that the Democratic candidate will win in November.

"So why all the smiles," Berg asks rhetorically, "on the Republican side?"

This is a wonderful place to start a piece if the writer is prepared to produce any evidence that there are, in fact, smiles on the Republican side. Of course, Berg is not so prepared. And as a new piece from the center-right Washington Post makes clear, that's because most Republicans think they're on a stomach-churning doom ride.

Don't take my word for it. Ask one of the Republican legislators who have said that the "thought of [McCain] being president sends a cold chill" down their spines. Or just check out a few of the quotes from the story:

"It's no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand."

Note that this man is not even smiling in his campaign photo. Keep on not smiling, Rep. Davis! The nonpartisan types are with you:

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst of congressional politics, said: "The math is against [Republicans]. The environment is against them. The money is against them. This is one of those cycles that if you're a Republican strategist, you just want to go into the bomb shelter."

Let's recap what's been happening to the GOP in recent weeks. The party has:

* Lost former House speaker Dennis Hastert's seat in a special election, despite the Republican National Campaign Committee's pumping $1.2 million into the race (in a district once thought a GOP stronghold);

* Discovered that the former RNCC treasurer may have embezzled as much as $1 million from the group's campaign war chest;

* Seen approval ratings for their party's standard-bearer sink to 19 percent. Among registered voters, that number is a staggering 18 percent, among the lowest levels in U.S. history;

* Failed to field a candidate to oppose a Democratic senator in swing state Arkansas;

* Saw potential Republican candidates evaporate in New Jersey and South Dakota as well.

This is all horrifying news for Republicans -- and that's without considering that the GOP presidential candidate wants to ramp up a dreadfully unpopular war and go against the country's wishes on critical issues like reproductive rights and health care. Or that he's chosen to hitch his wagon in the public eye to a guy (Bush) that most Americans dislike and mistrust.

But none of that probably matters, writes Berg, because Barack Obama is a black guy, and Hillary Clinton is a woman, and they're campaigning against each other, and sometimes that campaigning involves discussing race and gender. Also, he notes, one poll shows that -- eight months before the election -- a to-be-determined Dem may be running behind an already-chosen GOP candidate in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania!

Yes, the preceding paragraph really sums up the support for Berg's argument. Maybe he's just frustrated by the candidates bickering. But that's no justification for a story with no "there" there.

Maybe, argues Berg, "the more people get to know the Democratic candidates the less they like them," even though that is nearly certain to be false for both candidates. Hillary Clinton has been a national figure for two decades, and for better or for worse, people know how they feel about her. Also, it is positively dumbfounding that one could make that charge about Obama, given that his campaign has taken precisely the opposite trajectory Berg suggests.

As for McCain, his biggest problem doesn't show up in the polls. It's that the hard-right Republican base so critical to beating John Kerry likely won't turn out for him.

His biggest asset? That McCain's own base -- the media -- will treat the longtime Arizona senator with kid gloves not extended to his eventual opponent.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at March 17, 2008 5:00 AM | Comments (3)

 

Obama's Friday news dump was in advance of assault on Hillary's secrecy

Filed under: Hillary Clinton

Politicians love to release bad news on Friday, because nobody's paying attention. And boy, did Obama use the opportunity to unload a lot of baggage.

This week, Obama finally opened up about Tony Rezko, his fundraiser and real-estate fixer, and one of the few ethical lapses that seems to be gaining traction as Hillary looks for a chink in Obama's armor.

As if that wasn't enough, Obama also dumped Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his long time confidant (who even gave him the title of his book), after footage circulated of Wright denouncing America.

So what is going on here? Is Obama wilting in the spotlight? Is Clinton scoring points with the judges?

Well, this Chicago Tribune story suggests its a pre-emptive bit of housecleaning before an all-out assault on Hillary Clinton over the issue of secrecy.

PLAINFIELD, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama is trying to air his dirty laundry -- even some items that might appear just a little wrinkled -- as he prepares a full assault on Sen. Hillary Clinton over ethics and transparency.

The Obama campaign seems to be launching that assault today, according to this CNN story:

(CNN) — Barack Obama's campaign on Sunday stepped up its efforts to portray rival Hillary Clinton as a secretive politician, calling the New York senator a "veteran of non-disclosure."

In a conference call with reporters Sunday afternoon, Obama's top aides implored Clinton to release past tax returns, earmark requests, documents from husband’s Presidential Library and the list of donors to the Library.

"What is Sen. Clinton hiding and what is lurking in the documents?" Obama Communications Director Robert Gibbs asked on the conference call.

David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist, also repeated the campaign's past claim that the New York senator remains to be fully vetted, and suggested Republicans could unearth now unknown details about Clinton.

Didn't she promise to release these documents after Texas/Ohio? Why are we still waiting?

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 16, 2008 3:46 PM | Comments (3)

 

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