Friday, February 15, 2008

Dirty Politics

John Weidner writes the article I wish I had over at his blog Random Jottings. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, writing at alternet, predicts that as Hillary goes down, the Republicans will turn their dirty tricks on Obama.

Hutchinson goes into detail here. He predicts that Obama's previous votes on issues will be attacked. The nerve of the Right Wing Attack Machine!
That's just the start. His votes and views during his days in the Illinois Senate on taxes, abortion, civil liberties, civil rights, law enforcement and capital punishment have so far drawn little public attention, because of the media and a big chunk of the public's obsession with nailing Hillary. But in a head to head match up with the likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Republicans and conservative interest groups will surgically dissect his state Senate votes and they will find much there to pound him on.
But wait, there's more! Hutchinson predicts that Obama will be attacked personally by - well, we'll let Earl explain it himself:
Then there's the personal dirty stuff. They'll hammer him for his dealings with an indicted Chicago financier, for possible conflicts of interest in other financial dealings and legislative votes, and for his fuzzy, oftentimes contradictory, statements and actions on the Iraq War and terrorism.
Weidner tears Hutchinson apart, phrase by phrase. Wish I'd said that.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:35 AM

    Oh yeah. Obama will be attacked if he gets the nomination. And not just for the things that he has done that are questionable but some of the honorable things as well. The Republican machine works well at this kind of stuff with or without Karl Rove running things behind the curtain. (Mental image of Wizard of Oz with Rove's being the man behind the curtain)

    Anyways keep posting. Good stuff.

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  2. The other association your are supposed to have is for scary music to be cued in whenever Dick Cheney's name is mentioned.

    I like that Rove thing.

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  3. Anonymous2:41 PM

    Sooner or later, Obama will be called to account for several things.
    1)running a low-content campaign, where voters can project onto Obama their own particular views of what CHANGE should constitute.
    2) his actual political views, as shown by votes and quotes. Example: Zbig making the pilgrimage to Damascus at Obama's behest, following in the footsteps of David Duke and others who have made the pilgrimage to Damascus.
    3) his friends and associates.

    We will hear from the holier-than-thou Liberals that the above constitute "smearing." Ironically, Obama is a product of Chicago machine politics, which has never had a reputation for making nice. Witness Obama’s rough-knuckled start in Chicago politics: keep your opponents off the ballot.

    Let the games begin

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  4. Anonymous6:43 PM

    Oh I think there are times when that's correct. Most often when a politician is running a campaign of "Hope" or something of the like he or she is running a campaign of b.s. But I think lately Obama has been doing a great job of making himself distinct in that category. He's been going out of his way to tie the campaign's buzzwords like "hope" into the issues he's running on. And it is those issues he's running on not just the prospect of change. I think he's legitimately running on the hope that people recognize his vision for change is in fact more radical than the electorate had even hoped for. But of course this same fact is making a lot of people overly analytical and cynical about Obama.

    But dems da breaks. As they say.

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  5. Anonymous5:24 PM

    I read the alternet column with disbelief: if pointing out a candidate's past votes counts as a dirty trick, then there is nothing to do but dirty tricks. And I think that's the... trick... here: if even that is a dirty trick, then absolutely everything Republicans do is a dirty trick. It's like defining terms so your opponent is automatically wrong by definition.

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