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Obama, "Extreme?" Be prepared for much worse
By JAMES ZIPADELLI
del.ico.us
reddit!
As Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama solider on in this endless campaign, the North Carolina primary on Tuesday gave us a glimpse of what's to come for Obama, should he win the nomination. The North Carolina GOP aired an ad playing up the link between Obama and his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor," the narrator intones. It cuts back to Wright saying, "and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America? No no no ... not God bless America, God damn America." The ad actually targets two other supporters of Obama, Beth Purdue and Richard Moore, who are two North Carolina gubernatorial candidates, but it's Wright who gets the most attention. "They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina," the ad concludes.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, tried to take the high road. "I don't know why they do it. Obviously, I don't control them, but I'm making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there's no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don't want it," McCain said, according to the Associated Press.
But the N.C. GOP is just doing his dirty work for him. It's checking off every 3am ad, every Wright sermon, every comment on small-town America whose voters "cling to guns or religion" and every question about his patriotism. The Republican National Committee has registered domain names to use against either candidate depending on who gets the nomination, according to the New York Times. How does baracktheamateur.com or norealexperience.com sound? For Clinton, the names aren't much better: clintonisbad.com or hopelesshillary.com.
The NC GOP's Obama attack ad is reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's attack on Sen. John Kerry when he was a presidential candidate in 2004. The ad, "They Served," features a series of men claiming to be part of Kerry's chain of command in Vietnam. "They served their country with honor and distinction. They're the men who served with John Kerry in Vietnam," the narrator says. The ad claims Kerry's anti-war stance when he came home from a short stint in Vietnam helped to demonize the other men in his platoon. "They're the men that spent years in North Vietnamese prison camps, tortured for refusing to confess what John Kerry accused them of, of being war criminals ... With nothing to gain for themselves, except the satisfaction that comes with telling the truth, they have come forward to talk about the John Kerry they know. Because to them honesty and character still matter ... especially in a time of war." Kerry was blamed for not responding to those attacks fast enough. When he endorsed Obama, he suggested Obama won't be "Swiftboated." He will, and he has been—that's politics. The question is, will Obama push back forcefully enough without abandoning his message and voters in the process?
