October 27, 2008

10/27: Incendiary Charges

On Friday we observed that Matt Drudge was aggressively promoting a report that a 20-year-old PA female was robbed and mutilated by an African-American male who allegedly wanted to "teach her a lesson" for being a John McCain supporter. It was eventually revealed that the female (a McCain campaign volunteer named Ashley Todd) had "made the whole story up". Now Talking Points Memo is reporting that McCain's PA communications director initially "told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story...well before the facts of the case were known or established." Lefty bloggers are accusing the McCain camp of being both irresponsible and cynical in pushing such a racially charged story before it could be confirmed. Ezra Klein rips the McCain camp for trying "to eke out some temporary political advantage from a brutal street crime (country first, my friends!)."

Interestingly, that's not the only blogosphere story involving the PA GOP. Liberal bloggers are also blasting the state party for sending an email to Jewish voters "that likens a vote for [Barack Obama] to events that led up to the Holocaust". Lefty bloggers consider this email to be beyond the pale, and they're strongly denouncing the PA GOP's tactics.

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are buzzing about a 2001 audio clip (which is being heavily promoted by Drudge) in which Obama talks about achieving "redistributive change." Righty bloggers are describing Obama's comments as "Socialism 101" and "almost classic Marxism".

MCCAIN: First, Verify

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the role that McCain spokesperson Peter Feldman allegedly played in promoting the fake assault report. TPM's Greg Sargent reports:

"John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the 'B' carved into the victim's cheek stood for 'Barack,' according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. [...]

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time."

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "It comes as no surprise to learn that the McCain campaign was involved in pushing the now discredited Drudge and Fox News-generated deranged-black-man-mutilates-white-McCain-supporter story. [...] All this while the investigation was still going on and before any of Todd's claims had been verified."
• Klein: "Though it's true that the blogosphere showed admirable restraint in refusing to push the Ashley Todd hoax until more details emerged, you really can't say the same for the McCain campaign. They pushed the story hard, hoping to eke out some temporary political advantage from a brutal street crime (country first, my friends!). The McCain campaign: Not quite as fair-minded and temperamentally even as Michelle Malkin."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Reportedly, McCain and [Sarah] Palin both called the hoaxer to offer their support. Imagine the judgment, or lack thereof, of McCain and Plain. There's that vetting problem again."

TPM's Josh Marshall: "It is time for the McCain campaign to come clean about what role any of its staffers may have had in hyping or pushing the press to hype the charges stemming from Ashley Todd's vicious and reprehensible hoax. [...] Our reporting did not find any direct evidence that the McCain campaign's national headquarters played a role pushing the story. However, the national campaign has now come forward and lied about what happened in Pennsylvania. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers has now told NBC that alleged quotes from the McCain campaign in early reports of the story were actually the product of 'sloppy reporting' and that they were actually quotes from the Pittsburgh police. This is simply not credible. Initial reports specifically quote the McCain campaign. And at least two sources involved in the contemporaneous reporting have come forward and said on the record that the quotes came directly from the McCain campaign. To believe that two separate local news organizations made the identical mistake with the same quotes and are now both covering it up is simply not credible. But that is what Rogers is now claiming. The McCain campaign's after-the-fact lie about its role in this hoax makes it essential that it provide a complete and honest account of both the local and national campaign's role."

MCCAIN II: Stay Classy, Pennsylvania GOP

Liberal bloggers are blasting the PA GOP after it sent an email to Jewish voters "that likens a vote for [Obama] to events that led up to the Holocaust":

"'Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008,' the e-mail reads. 'Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!' A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was 'Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA -- Victory 2008.'"

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Pennsylvania GOP warns Keystone State Jews that Barack Obama is going to send us chosen folk into the ovens. This is so absurd I'm not even going to bother to be outraged. Someone ought to tell these people, though, that there's some kind of baseline level of plausibility that your attacks need to reach if you want them to be effective. You can say a candidate's health care plan will cost your family money, you can't say that a candidate's health care plan involves chopping up babies and serving them as medicinal."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "There are things you should not say unless you really, really mean them, and events you should not invoke lightly. Saying that voting for Obama, or for McCain, or for any of the major party candidates in my adult lifetime, would be a mistake that is in any way 'similar' to underestimating the horror of the Nazis is one of them. We should never forget what the Nazis actually did, or what the Pennsylvania Republican Party has seen fit to invoke so lightly; and we should not dishonor those who were murdered by using them to score cheap political points."

Several liberal bloggers are noting that the PA GOP spokesperson who's now trying to distance the McCain camp from this email is the same person who allegedly promoted the now-debunked assault report:

• TPM's David Kurtz: "Like the state GOP, the McCain camp is running away from this email, and the spokesperson doing the distancing is none other than Peter Feldman. That's the same guy who on Thursday, the day the email went out, was pushing the mugging hoax to reporters as a politically motivated attack by a black Obama supporter, playing to the worst of white fears and racial prejudices. Speaking of the email to Jewish voters and without any apparent hint of irony, Feldman told the AP Saturday night that McCain 'rejects politics that degrade our civics.' Amazing."
• dday: "The same spokesperson who's distancing himself from this mailer is the one who was feeding reporters the story of the campaign worker mugging. [...] If you're looking for the trends reflecting the worst of the Republican Party, check out Pennsylvania for the next ten days."

OBAMA: All Your Money Are Belong To Us

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about a 2001 audio clip (which is being heavily promoted by Drudge) in which Obama made the following remarks:

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. [...] And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that."

Conservative bloggers are portraying Obama's remarks about "redistributive change" as "shocking":

• Michelle Malkin: "The blogosphere is buzzing about this video posted on YouTube Sunday night. It's Barack Obama musing about how best to redistribute wealth in America in a Chicago Public Radio interview in 2001. Not whether, but how: Through the courts or through legislation? [...] Joe The Plumber, you barely scratched the surface."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "If people thought Joe the Plumber was some kind of stumble for Barack Obama, a rediscovered interview from 2001 should dispel any doubts about Barack Obama's redistributionism. Seven years ago, Obama told Chicago Public Radio that the Warren Court was too conservative and missed its opportunity to redistribute wealth on a much grander scale. In fact, Obama wanted them to break the Constitution and reorder American society far outside of what the founders intended."
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "[This is] more shocking than Obama's exchange with Joe the Plumber by far."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Would Obama have come as far as he has in this campaign if his slogan were not merely 'CHANGE' but 'REDISTRIBUTIVE CHANGE'?"
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "Underlying Obama's remarks is his hostility to the constitutional protections of property that I wrote about in 'Obama, Joe the plumber, and the gosel of envy.'"
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "What's shocking isn't that Obama bemoaned the Supreme Court's unwillingness to impose 'redistributive change' -- or even the fact that his statement that the Warren Court really wasn't terribly activist at all (although it's a chilling insight into his judicial philosophy and what we might expect in terms of nominees). After all, after one learns that Obama blamed 9/11 on a 'failure of empathy,' well, what do you expect? What is shocking is that all this redistribution talk is coming to light only now -- having been conveniently ignored by the press these many months. How is it that 'journalists' found time to contact Bridget McCain's friends on Facebook, but couldn't dig up this clip?"
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "...It is fairly obvious that Obama was saying nothing extraordinary in his own mind. This is the sort of thing left-leaning 'intellectuals' bandied about. It's the outlook that underscored the bent of not just his closest comrades at the time ( e.g. Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright and Father [Michael] Pfleger), but the activist organizations he and Bill Ayers supported through the Woods Fund. It is absurd, really, to write off all these associations as an aberration or exaggeration, or to ignore them as some imagining of paranoid conservatives. What comes through loud and clear was that Obama shared the classic anti-capitalist, redistributionist philosophy accepted as dogma by many on the Left."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Balloon Juice's John Cole mocks his conservative counterparts: "It is Monday, so you know what that means. Dozens of breathless right-whinge posts about Obama the socialist. As usual, they have NO EARTHLY FLIPPING IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT."

OBAMA II: The Netroots Vs. Mark Levin

For the past several months, conservative bloggers in general -- and several National Review bloggers in particular -- have been arguing that Obama is a dangerous radical who is only leading in the polls because the media is concealing his true views from the electorate. Mark Levin recently made a version of this argument in a lengthy post:

"I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country -- not yet anyway -- but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. [...] My greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The 'change' he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. [...] Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks 'fundamental change,' i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Sen. Maj. Leader] Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands."

Liberal bloggers think this argument is insane:

• Daily Kos' Hunter: "Poor Mark, good conservative that he is, is intellectually just stumped as to why, after the last eight miserable, no-good, scandal-plagued, war-ridden, economy-melting, soul-crushing, budget-raping, government-butchering years, anyone would possibly be switching sides in this election...and presumes it's because Obama and his campaign have some sort of crazy warlock power that's fooling all these poor dumb used-ta-be-conservatives. Because there's just no way a popular Democrat would be ahead if the media was doing its job. Or if Katie Couric hadn't asked Sarah Palin mean questions. Or if young people weren't wearing pro-Obama shirts, or Colin Powell still held fast to his own sanity. And it's all because SOCIALISM BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA! MARX! STALIN! THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR STAR WARS COLLECTABLES, TO REDISTRIBUTE THEM TO THE COMMON MASSES! PIRATE FLAPJACKS! KITTENS WITH HOWITZERS! BE VERY AFRAID RIGHT NOW! It's almost cute. The last refuge of a broken spirit."
• Kurtz: "Barack Obama is noted for his powerful intellect, but I don't think he gets nearly enough credit for the mental dexterity it takes to be simultaneously an Islamic theocrat, atheistic communist and national socialist while posing as a center left candidate. Those must be the compartmentalization skills they taught him at that Manchurian madrasah in Indonesia."
• Oliver Willis: "Is Barack Obama driving the right even crazier? This madman rant from Mark Levin says yes."

Sadly, No!'s Gavin M. paraphrases Levin's post: "The Communist Terror-Fascism of Animatronic-Skeletons-With-Scimitars Islam Negro Auschwitz Death Hitler is upon us."

HORSERACE: Abandon McCain? Never!

Most conservative bloggers disagree with David Frum's thesis in his recent Washington Post op-ed, in which he urged GOPers to give up on the Presidential race and focus on protecting their endangered Senate seats:

• Morrissey: "The Republicans are defending 23 seats in the Senate, and the Democrats 13. There's no way on God's green Earth that the GOP will have enough seats to block the Democratic agenda no matter how much the RNC spends; they'll be lucky to get 43 seats, and they can't spend the next two years filibustering everything if they plan to win seats back in 2010. They're better off spending the money on McCain -- his odds are much better than the Senate Republicans."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "Keep talking like that in this last week and you're liable to make a contribution to the dulling of presidential turnout on the Right. That's not going to get [NC Sen. Elizabeth] Dole, [NH Sen. John] Sununu, [KY Sen. Mitch] McConnell, [GA Sen. Saxby] Chambliss, [MN Sen. Norm] Coleman, etc., relected. I just don't see how the presidential race is over."
• Levin: "[...Does Frum] expect John McCain to take what remains of his war chest and distribute it to Republicans in tight races when, according to some polls at least, he is involved in a tight race himself? And, as Kathryn also pointed out, if the top of the ticket surrenders in advance of the election, totally demoralizing the Republican and conservative base and reducing turnout on Election Day, just where are the votes in these tight Senate races going to come from? Moreover, virtually all of the media time has already been purchased this late in the game -- that is, the money has already been obligated. I suppose that leaves the RNC. But the RNC isn't swimming in cash, either. Some of our deep thinkers need to think a little more deeply."
• NRO's Mark Steyn: "David now wants to prioritize the senators in order to save the party. We're in this mess in the first place because we have an over-Senatized party, starting with the presidential candidate, whose fortunes went south not when he picked his running mate but when the subprime hit the fan and he reacted senatorially -- by heading back to Washington and 'reaching across the aisle'. Whether the bailout bill was good or bad, it was always going to be ugly -- and it was something a shrewd national candidate would have stood aside from, as Obama did, coolly detached as the Capitol pygmies scurried hither and yon. In Westminster terms, Obama acted as if he was running for monarch while McCain was running for chief whip. [...] If McCain loses and he's back in the Senate with [PA Sen.] Arlen [Specter] and the Maine ladies and the rest of the gang, it will be a club of bipartisan accommodationists and capricious eccentrics. The idea that these guys will be any kind of 'engine of our renewal' strikes me as far more ludicrous than the possibility of Mister Maverick getting to 270 next Tuesday. The best way to help Senator Sununu & Co is not to write off the top of the ticket but to drive up turnout for it."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Frum is a terrific analyst, but here I find him mostly unpersuasive. First, in the polls I've looked at, McCain isn't running that badly among independents. He's trailing Obama because the pollsters find or assume (correctly, I think) that there are now many more Democrats than Republicans. This phenomenon is mainly the result of (1) new voter registration fueled in part by Obama-mania and (2) disillusionment with the Republican party as a whole. It has little or nothing to do with McCain's recent efforts at outreach to the Republican base, by which Frum seems mostly to mean the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. [...] Second, Frum presents no evidence that 'McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot.' It seems more plausible that congressional Republicans are hurting for the same reason McCain is -- voters blame Republicans for the nation's economic woes, especially the financial meltdown. Third, Frum prescribes that 'every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign be shifted to a senatorial campaign.' In principle, I agree that some RNC resources should be shifted to close Senate races. However, I'm not sure how feasible it is to shift significant amounts of RNC money at this juncture."

NRO's Mark Krikorian is one of the few righty bloggers who agrees with Frum: "Stopping a Democratic supermajority in the Senate is just a lot more likely than stopping Obama from being elected president. That being the case, I don't see any way to argue against David's advice that 'Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be shifted to a senatorial campaign,' and for vulnerable Senate candidates to present themselves as a needed counterweight to an Obama White House. [...] Sen. McCain has spent his whole career looking out for his own interests at the expense of the Republican party and conservatism. Given the circumstances, it's imperative they return the favor, not out of pique or spite, but simply self-preservation."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Candidates Matter More Than Campaigns

The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini:

"...What is striking about 2008 is how little the campaigns have mattered in comparison to the fundamental nature of the two men running. Nothing the McCain campaign did could change the reality of McCain the candidate's poor management instincts and his tendency to fidget around and not stay on message. When the economic crisis hit, this reality flew in the face of the McCain campaign's message of steadiness versus inexperience. Whether by design or the candidate's nature, Obama's caution and deliberation was a living, breathing talking point against the experience card.

Likewise, I think it will be said that the McCain campaign has yet to really lay a glove on Obama character-wise because Obama himself simply does not project the cloying, insecure, effete tendencies of past nominees like [Al] Gore and [John] Kerry, though the only two times he's come close (Wright and bitter/cling) have barely figured in the general election campaign. I do think 'celeb' was the best chance we had to define Obama personally, but again, though there is something to be said for attacking a guy's strength, Obama's grassroots appeal was a legitimate strength, not a hidden weakness.

I am becoming more and more convinced that to run for President, you need to be the kind of person who doesn't give a s*** what's said about you and you just keep on going, steady as she goes. Obama has this, and so did Bush in both his campaigns. The key is to appear calm, unruffled, and grounded in your persona while seeming to be a man (or crucially, woman) of action in politics and policy."

LEST WE FORGET: Ron Paul Promises To Return When Country Needs Him Most

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- After piling the last of his Campaign for Liberty signs in the back of a beat-up Ford truck Thursday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) once again abandoned his candidacy for president and rode on out toward the low western sun, but not before vowing to come back to Washington 'when [the country] is ready.' 'When the river swirls and the wind blows, and when uncontrollable inflation forces us to revert to the gold standard, and the Federal Reserve bank is exposed as the unconstitutional, neofascist cabal it really is, you'll see me coming over that hill,' said Paul, leaving a dusty cowboy hat and a stack of 'no' votes on his seat in the House of Representatives. 'But don't you fret, America. If you ever feel like your government is getting too big or too intrusive, just give a little whistle, and there I'll be. I'll be there quicker'n you can spit.' Although no one has seen or heard from the Texas congressman since Thursday, sources report the Ron Paul for President campaign has gained an additional $2.3 million in contributions since his disappearance."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 27, 2008 01:52 PM