i’d say this will work
- Posted by Martin on May 12th, 2008 filed in 2008 election, Barack Obama, Martin
Investors Business Daily, the bastion of clear-headed conservative thought, nails a strategy for beating teh Obamessiahâ„¢
Confront his vacuous platform. (I would also add; use his own words to describe his positions and thereby label him a featherweight radical liberal neophyte (who is more than peripherally connected to a bunch of dubious, corrupt slime-merchants from the sleaziest arena in politics)).
The way Republicans will beat Sen. Barack Obama is by making the election a referendum on him — by exposing his dangerous agenda and radical record. There are signs that the GOP intends to do exactly that.
Mitch McConnell, as usual, is in the vanguard.
McConnell, a longtime member of the Senate, also pointed out that the image of Obama as uniter and bridge builder is nothing more than a legend.
“I can’t think of a single occasion” when Obama “has been involved with Republicans on any meaningful legislation,” McConnell said. “He’s a straight-line, big-government, high-taxing liberal.”
Never a truer word spoken, and it needs to be repeated until the voters are saying it in their sleep.
Hillary is a dreadful egomaniac without a scintilla of regard for the truth, and she’d be a seriously bad President. That said, she’s almost a grown-up with a record of occasionally taking adult positions on very important issues that sophomoric lefties like Obama would simply sniff at and deem naive (or some other Carteresque code words for ‘offensive to middle-class campus radicals’). He’s the real deal, if you use that term to describe elitist nanny-state crypto-Marxists, and stopping him is a job that needs to be taken seriously.
I suspect the voters will come to this realization and deliver the White House to John McCain, but our side needs to make sure there’s no possibility of that not happening. An Obama Presidency would be catastrophic for America, and arguably the world - his ideas have been tried on every continent across the globe, and, put very simply, they don’t work, never will, and generally cause untold misery and suffering.
By all means let him be a standard-bearer for the moneyed-elite Democrats in their urban coffee-house cocoons, but for God’s sake don’t let him near the football.
Lord Bitememan says:
Alas, I think the argument “He’s a liberal” is just as vacuous as “Hopechange.” If it were me in charge of McCain’s campaign, I’d score a few populist points this way. “Senator Obama has put before the public promises of uniting us, promises of a new direction in government, and he brings to the table remarkably little in the way of a record upon which to evaluate this. Eight years ago another neophyte politician dwelling secretly in the fringes of politics came to us with similar nebulous promises. Ask yourself this, are we any more united, have we seen any more change over these past eight years? It is time to give a chance to someone with an established record of bipartisan cooperation, someone who’s politics are known, someone who knows how to change Washington rather than someone with lofty dreams and rhetoric and very little perspective.”
Yeah, it would throw Bush under a bus. BFD. Bush is a big boy and he can take it, and like it or not Bush is not a very popular man in this country right now, and the closer McCain moves towards Bush to court “conservatives,” the further he moves away from electability.
And to wayward conservatives who still appear intent on torpedoing this election, I leave you with words of wisdom from Spike Lee’s White Men Can’t Jump “You’d rather look good and lose than look bad and win.”
TC says:
LB - Here’s the thing… Liberals, spare few exceptions, always deny being liberal.
“I’m not a liberal. I’m a uniter for hope and change.”
Bull honky.
Painting John Kerry as a flip-flopping far left politician is about the only thing that gave W his (lame) second term.
I think Senator McConnell has this one 100% correct. Obama’s record is a vast departure from his rhetoric. McCain’s is consistent.
What McCain’s campaign ought to do is use quotations from Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Castro and Mao to highlight Obama’s political achievements, support base and voting record.
Lord Bitememan says:
TC, I’m not saying don’t call him a liberal. I’m just saying that calling him a liberal will not, alone, win us this election. It’s insufficient. I’d disagree that it’s what killed John Kerry. Two things conjoined to kill John Kerry. The first was this “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.” He tried to frame himself as a war hero, which opened the door to his anti-war activism and his Senate testimony. The second thing was his attempt to campaign on a change of direction in Iraq. That was a buzzword for “Kick the conservative out and I’ll get the French involved on our side with troops.” When European leaders said even a John Kerry presidency wouldn’t lead to their involvement in the war, Kerry had to flounder to find an explaination for his Iraq policy. He never did. So, then it joined. Here was a guy who was busy running around in the 1960s stabbing his fellow troops in the back and now he has some brand new war strategy which he can’t elaborate on. The country, as a whole, opted not to change to that horse mid-stream. It wasn’t the liberal values issue that was much trumpeted. Michigan and Oregon both voted to ban gay marriage, and voted for John Kerry.
That’s why I say the best way to attack Obama is to go after his cornerstone argument. Much as John Kerry centered his campaign around his war heroism, Obama has positioned himself as an agent of change. Attacking his ability to change removes the basis for voting for Obama. Being a liberal is part of that, but it has to be placed in the proper context. Simply calling him a liberal makes the case for him. He’s a liberal, but isn’t our current president a conservative? Surely the switch achieves the “change” Obama has promised. And in as much, we spend time and effort convincing voters that Obama will give you what he promised, something different. That’s why I say associate him with Bush. It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but it is a sound argument. Bush was another fresh-face heady-rhetoric “uniter” candidate. His idea was “compassionate conservatism,” Obama has “hopechange.” Neither really gave any specifics on what they wanted to do to get it done. Both secretly dwell in the far wings of their respective political tilts. The Dems are trying to couch a McCain presidency as a “3rd Bush term,” but when you look at it, Obama is really just a Bush from the left instead of the right. That means an Obama presidency doesn’t change things, it doesn’t unite us, and the bright hope everyone has will fade into cynicism and bitterness before his first term is up. That undercuts the “change” argument upon which Obama has staked his candidacy, and can do to him exactly what swiftboats did to Kerry. That’s my thinking. Sure, we’ll call him a liberal, but we need an answer to the “so what” that follows, and that, my friend, is it.
William Teach says:
I understand what you are writing, LB. McCain, and all the groups out there, need to concentrate on more then just catch phrases. They need to dig deep into what Obama truly stands for.