 | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|
« Can One Room Contain Two Egos That Big? | Main | McCain Wins as Obama Goes to Iraq » July 18, 2008Off Limts?In February, after we at the Tennessee GOP released a light-hearted YouTube video gently mocking Barack Obama's wife Michelle Obama for her statement that she hadn't always been proud of her country (until her husband started doing well in the polls, coincidentally), the national media and Democrats went bonkers, claiming we'd "attacked" Mrs. Obama, and even accusing the ad of being racist. It wasn't the least bit racist, though the Obama campaign and its surrogates and allies are lightning-quick to declare any criticism of the Obamessiah to be rooted in racism. (Even Democrat voters in West Virginia who voted for Hillary Clinton were declared by many prominent Democrat pundits to be voting against Obama out of latent racism, rather than voting for Clinton because they supported her campaign and agenda.) Barack Obama himself generated half a million views for the ad when he went on ABC's Good Morning America and famously admonished critics to "lay off my wife." Even some Republicans bought into the concept that presidential nominee's spouses were to be "off limits" to criticism. Now, with Obama again declaring his wife off limits to criticism, this time in that weighty political journal Glamour magazine, and with the Washington state GOP releasing a YouTube video very derivative of the Tennessee GOP's video, the issue of whether candidates' spouses are off limits or fair game is once again front-and-center. As the story develops, you'll probably hear some in the national media, and especially Democrat-favoring pundits, analysts and consultants, claim that the Obama campaign and its allies have not attacked Republican presidential nominee John McCain's wife, Cindy McCain. That is, of course, a load of donkey dung, as NewsBusters.org reveals today. The simple bottom line is, what candidates' spouses say and do in public on the campaign trail is fair game - just as are the actions and statements of any campaign surrogates. And that's the way it should be. If Barack Obama doesn't want his wife to be criticized, he should either take her off the campaign trail or get her to stop making stupid comments calling America a "downright mean" country, whining that $600 is only enough to buy earrings, and admitting she has trouble finding reasons to be proud of America. It's not the critics fault that Mrs. Obama's comments - and his put-down of rural Americans who own guns and go to church - do damage his campaign and paint the Obamas as out-of-touch elitists. Barack Obama needs to grow a thicker skin. So does his campaign and his allies and supporters. His critics certainly do not need to lay off. Posted in Campaign Season
Comments
This is the best the GOP has? This is what the Republican Party has been reduced to. Well, that is unless you count the tabloid media's obsession with Rev. Wright and Father Flany. That worked out so well. Few are surprised by the GOP attacks on Michelle. As for the TN GOP, they'll stop at nothing, even if means manufacturing total lies. We're still eagerly waiting for that "Whitey" video tape by the way. There's simply nothing else for the GOP to talk about these days. They can't talk about energy policy because they haven't had one for the last eight years. They can't talk about education because they're practically against it. Iraq? Can't go there obviously. Economy? Now, that's really playin' with fire. I'm surprised national security is still a strong point for the GOP given the border is still wide open for enemies to walk across unchecked. How about moral values? Nope. Craig, Foley, and Vitter slipped up on that secret. You know, the one that had us all believing the GOP had a monopoly on faith and God... The Republican brand is on life-support, and voters are pulling the plug on November 4th. Posted by: B. Newsome at July 18, 2008 7:38 PM Aren't those who complain the most about this often the same people who very disrespectfully bash President Bush for anything and everything? I think most Americans are really getting sick of this kind of hypocrisy. Posted by: Kathy at July 19, 2008 11:24 AMB Newsome: The TN GOP does not "manufacture lies." Please review our releases for the last year, at www.tngop.org under the "news" tab. We tell the truth. As for the alleged "whitey" tape, the TNGOP never mentioned it in a release, and everything I wrote here on my personal blog was skeptical in tone, just reporting the chatter. As for the issues you list that we allegedly don't talk about, we talk about many of them all of the time. Energy policy: The Republican energy policy is and has always been to increase domestic production. Democrats block it. If the GOP had won the day in 1995, Clinton wouldn't have vetoed drilling in ANWR, and we would have an extra million or so barrels of oil a day right now. Education: we often talk about the need for real education reform, while Dems talk about paying union teachers more but oppose increased accountability. The economy? It grew at a healthy clip for more than 6 years thanks to the Bush tax cuts. Now, it is growing less rapidly - but STILL GROWING - and that's pretty good considering the subprime situation and the high fuel prices. The best way to fix the economy: Drill for more oil, and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Obama wants to NOT drill more, and to INCREASE taxes. National security: We have won in Iraq, haven't been attacked on our own soil since 9/11, and have Europe on our side in the war on terror now - France, Germany, Britain, even the former Soviet client states of Eastern Europe. The border, admittedly, is still wide-open, but if the Dems had their way, it would be wide open with express lanes. The Democrat-controlled Congress is three times less popular than President Bush right now because what they want to do most people oppose and what they don't want to do o (build the border fence, for example) is what the majority actually wants them to do. America is still a center-right country. Eveidence? Obama, having won the nomination by catering the left-wingers in the Dem party, promptly moved to the right on many issues. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at July 19, 2008 11:48 AMWhat is the justification for tampering with the sound clip and muting the word "really" in the ad? I thought it was pretty amateur and cheesy. By the way, Vitter got a standing ovation when he got back to work. Posted by: SemiPundit at July 19, 2008 11:57 PMWe didn't tamper with it. That's the way the clip was when we downloaded it from youtube. Posted by: BIll Hobbs at July 20, 2008 7:24 PMPost a comment
Comments Policy: Your comment is subject to deletion if it is off-topic or includes foul language or personal attack. Readers, please email me if you find comments that include egregious violations of this policy. Comments may not post immediately - do not post twice!
|
|||||||||||
