Posted on 12/24/2006 11:55:09 AM PST by freespirited
In this holiday season, Democrats are trying to decide if Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the gift their party has been waiting for, or just another sack of sticks and ashes.
One thing is certain: He has presidential hopefuls on both sides of the aisle checking their hole cards.
Obama is a genuine, up-from-the-grassroots phenomenon. On the wings of one spectacular speech, he has ignited the hopes of disillusioned voters from coast to coast. We haven't seen his like in a generation or more.
Whether that star-power can withstand the withering fire that will be directed at him from both political parties is a question still to be answered. But, for the moment, some tough old ward-heelers, veterans of Democratic defeats, are letting visions of sugar plums dance in their weary heads.
"We don't have red states, we don't have blue states, we just have red, white and blue states." Music. The kind we haven't heard in half a century.
Democrat hopefuls who have been waiting their turn and Republican stalwarts who are sure they have earned their chance are already lobbing grenades at this dangerous upstart.
"Nice fellow, but he has no experience."
Irrefutable. It was exactly the same charge leveled against the last senator to win the presidency, John F. Kennedy. It almost worked. Sen. Kennedy won one of the closest races in presidential history against a man who had a great deal of experience at many levels of government. Richard Nixon. Perhaps the memory of Mr. Nixon leaves voters no longer convinced that a lack of experience in Washington should be the deal breaker.
"Nice fellow, but he's, well, you know.... Of course it wouldn't matter to me, but is America really ready for, well, you know...."
Race is always a subtext in American life, just as is religion. Again, we have the Kennedy model. The senator from Massachusetts carried the burden of the Al Smith landslide of 1928. No Catholic could be elected president. It had never happened, would never happen. Suspicion of the Catholic Church was too ingrained in many parts of American culture. But America had moved on from the days of Al Smith. Kennedy's charisma trumped fading prejudice.
Has America moved on from the days when the Ku Klux Klan marched arrogantly in the streets of Washington, D.C., in the 1920s, the same decade when anti-Catholicism broke the Democrats' "solid south?"
Barack Obama is African-American, but he is also the first potential national politician with that racial background to rise after the bare-knuckled civil rights conflicts. He brings none of those tendrils to the table. That fact raises hackles in some segments of the battle-scarred black political establishment.
Mr. Obama is not required to make race the primary factor in every issue on the national agenda, as are warriors who cut their teeth on the Bull Connor battlegrounds: Those for whom politics is informed by the marches, the imprisonments and the speeches and the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
In fact, it could be argued that Barack Obama is the first of the generation about which Dr. King had his dream. A public person who could be judged, "not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character."
Which brings us to the question, what is Sen. Obama's character? A few people have read his books. More have heard him speak. He admits to standard youthful indiscretions. He has had middle-class experiences. Faith. Family. Education. Marriage.
We look at other candidates. Hillary Clinton. Good marks as a senator, reaching out to Republican colleagues. But few gifts as a speaker, eight tough years in the White House and the health care debacle. John McCain. A genuine American hero, but his latter-day embrace of President Bush and his lurch to the right have damaged his reputation as an independent straight shooter. Rudy Giuliani, "America's Mayor" after the catastrophe of 9-11, brings his messy marital history, which will be replayed ad nauseam on TV.
All have something Sen. Obama lacks. Baggage. Heavy baggage from the 1960s through Iraq. Perhaps he is betting America is ready for a candidate with star quality to help us, as he says, "Turn the page."
He should run. He'll never have another moment like this.
Leave it to the MSM to claim that a man who opposed legislation that would protect the country from dope dealers, sexual predators, and people who let infants born alive starve to death has no baggage.
Obama ping
Didn't we hear all of this after Mario Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention?
Wait until the liberals find out Obama is a smoker.
Thank you! :)
Here's all any Conservative needs to know about Obama:
Special Interest Group Ratings:
Planned Parenthood - 100% Support
National Right To Life - 0% Support
NARAL - 100% Support
Americans for Tax Reform - 0% Support
ACLU - 83% Support
NEA - 100% Support
NOW Hags - 100% Support
Citizens Against Government Waste - 13% Support
Gun Owners of America - 0% Support
NRA - "F" Rating
Federation for American Immigration Reform - 0% Support
US Border Patrol - 8% Support
Unions - 82% - 100% Support
Population Connection - 100% Support (These are the 'Zero Growth' freaks)
http://vote-smart.org/issue_rating_category.php?can_id=BS030017
[Obama's record in the Illinois senate:]
- Opposed the Defense of Marriage Act; would work to repeal it in the U.S. Senate; would not vote for any legislation that would restrict the ability of gays and lesbians to marry.
- Opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in Illinois. A similar bill passed the U.S. Senate 98-0. The Born Alive bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother's wishes. Obama inexplicably opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
- Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
- Obama puts rigid ideology before what's best for the people of Illinois, and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA, Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
- Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
- Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty to gang members who murder first responders.
- Finally, just in case you thought it couldn't get any worse, Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.
How about we wait until the rest of middle America finds out his middle name "HUSSAIN"? He will be slammed like a cheap screen door.
Meadow Muffin
"Obama is a genuine, up-from-the-grassroots phenomenon."
too funny.
He has contrived himself.
and the media conjures even more.
his cheap and flimsy wing tiles will erode and he will either crash or make a very shaky landing before summer gets here.
First time I ever heard of the media called the grassroots.
Obama is a slightly smoother gas bag.
"On the wings of one spectacular speech"
that some speachwriter wrote for him....
gimme a break...
He's complex; who isn't? and he talks good. We have two years to hear him out. In the meantime maybe somebody with a more Conservative attitude can rise above the pack and say the right words.
Merry Christmas
FMCDH(BITS)
Anyway to arrange for him a drive around Chappaquiddick with Ted Kennedy...at night....after a party?
St. Louis Browns.
1953.
Look it up.
Pant, pant, pant!
Look at the byline...looney Clooney's Father. That means Obama will have the support of Hollywood. The silver lining is that they will be against Hillary. This almost guarantees a Hillary/Obama ticket and that will be a difficult ticket to beat.
Is he really? Oh, that would be too perfect.
Obama is a genuine, up-from-the-grassroots phenomenon.
--
He IS a creation of the MSM... nothing more.
Meanwhile hillary will hide from that mean ol press until election time.
All the while she will never ever have to answer those tough to answer questions, her front men will always be there. It's all prearranged.
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