Posted on 02/16/2008 5:03:25 PM PST by jdm
LEADING Republicans believe they can trounce Barack Obama in the presidential election by tarring him as a shady Chicago socialist. They are increasingly confident that his campaign could collapse by the time their attack machine has finished with him.
Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist, said: “Barack Obama has been able to create his own image and introduce himself to voters, but the swing voters in a general election are not paying attention yet. He is open to being defined as a leftwing, corrupt Chicago politician.”
Norquist’s comments will be music to the ears of Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Democratic rival, who believes Obama has not been sufficiently “vetted” for the White House. She has been unable to attack him too vociferously without risking a backlash from Democratic primary voters, but Republicans may salvage her campaign by doing the job for her.
Obama has the voting record of a “hard-left” socialist, according to Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator.
“It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”
Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and Republican guru, recently described Obama as the “most leftwing candidate to run since George McGovern” – a reference to the anti-Vietnam-war Democrat who lost 49 states out of 50 to Richard Nixon in the 1972 election. Norquist believes Obama’s questionable Chicago connections will stir things further.
The city has a reputation for corruption from the days when Al Capone and his mob ran the town in the 1920s. Obama is tainted by his long association with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Chicago property developer who is scheduled to go on trial for extorting kickbacks in return for political favours on March 3, the day before the Ohio and Texas primaries.
Obama bought his family home in Chicago for $1.65m, $300,000 less than the asking price, on the day that Rezko’s wife Rita bought an adjoining lot at the full price of $650,000. Obama later paid her $105,000 for a sixth of her yard in order to expand his garden.
The seller insisted on both plots being sold together, which suggests that Rezko did Obama an enormous favour even if the deal was not illegal. The seller has so far evaded press inquiries, but he is regarded as a potential “ticking timebomb” should he decide to go public.
Clinton briefly raised the question of Rezko, whom she described as a “slum landlord”, in a televised debate with Obama in California, but was silenced when a 1990s picture emerged of her with Rezko and President Bill Clinton. Obama has returned around $85,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko.
“Hillary put the issue into the bloodstream, but it didn’t get focused on,” said Norquist. He believes that well financed “527” attack groups – named after their tax-exempt status – will mercilessly pursue Obama over his ties to Rezko. It was a conservative “527” group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who did grave damage to John Kerry’s reputation as a war hero in the 2004 White House race.
Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said last week he would resign in the event of a contest against Obama as he did not want to participate in tearing him down.
But other members of McCain’s team have already gone for the jugular. A testy exchange last year between the two senators over the Iraq troop surge led a senior aide to take aim at Obama’s former drug use by claiming he “wouldn’t know the difference between an RPG [rock-et-propelled grenade] and a bong [smoking pipe]”.
Obama could run into further difficulties over his relationship with William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and former member of the Weather Underground, a leftwing terrorist group that planted bombs in the Capitol and the Pentagon in the 1970s.
Ayers told The New York Times on the day of the September 11 attacks: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” It emerged last week that Ayers served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, an antipoverty group, from 1999 to 2002, and donated $200 towards his Illinois state Senate campaign in 2001.
Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of the conservative journal NewsMax and an arch tormentor of the Clintons over the Whitewater property scandal in the 1990s, believes Obama is “an old-style Chicago politician” who will nonetheless be difficult for Republicans to undermine.
“People are already gearing up to take on Obama, but there is a lot of apathy among the Republican ideological base. You don’t see a level of energy there,” Ruddy said. “If they go too far in their attacks, it will backfire.”
Portrayals of Obama as an irresponsible tax-and-spend liberal are already under way. Lawrence Kudlow, a former adviser to Ron-ald Reagan, put Obama’s “spend-ometer” at $800 billion by costing his proposals for extending health insurance, implementing green energy plans, setting up an infrastructure investment bank and other initiatives.
Obama has also said he may tax people earning more than $97,000, a potentially unpopular move that Clinton is now seeking to make a campaign issue.
However, Obama’s chief economics adviser, Austan Gools-bee, a professor at the University of Chicago, is a supporter of the free market. Obama has also been endorsed by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Americas, the financial group, is a big donor. “When I sat down with him, I found him to be unbelievably refreshing and smart and thoughtful,” he said.
Obama was introduced to Wolf by George Soros, the bil-lionaire financier and philanthropist who is a favourite target of the right for his sponsorship of leftwing groups and antiIraq war stance.
Obama’s pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq is a key point of difference with McCain, who believes a hasty withdrawal could provoke genocide and let Al-Qaeda regain its footing.
Patrick Murphy, a Democratic congressman and Iraq war veteran, said: “I’m proud to be a fiscal conservative and, in my opinion, Obama is a moderate. He wants to partner with businesses and corporations.”
He also believes Obama will withdraw responsibly from Iraq. “He has laid out a timetable fora ‘pull out and strike strategy’ – pull the troops to the border and strike against Al-Qaeda.”
Obama has managed to draw support from the most leftwing elements of the Democratic party, such as MoveOn.org, while winning over independents and disillusioned Republicans. Jim Kessler of Third Way, a centre-left Washington think tank, said: “He has managed to make an argument for postpartisanship in a way that appeals to very liberal Democrats because he is such a gifted orator.”
Just as Republicans will seek to tarnish Obama as a leftwinger, so Democrats will make sure pictures of McCain with George W Bush are everywhere.
Only now are Republicans beginning to ponder seriously which Democrat will be McCain’s strongest election opponent, after assuming for a long time that Clinton would be the easier target.
Ruddy thinks Democrats might be preparing to ditch the “dreaded Hillary” only to replace her by the “most leftwing nominee in memory”. Even so, he believes President Obama isa distinct possibility.
Tarring him? Oh, please, Sarah. Grow the F up.
Since when does The Sunday Times think that identifying someone as a socialist is “tarring” him? I thought it was a complement, among the intellectual class.
Shady. CHECK
Chicago. CHECK
Socialist. CHECK (actually he’s a communist)
jas3
Oh, so he’s not a shady Chicago socialist? Is there a lower kind of socialist?
“Obama could run into further difficulties over his relationship with William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and former member of the Weather Underground, a leftwing terrorist group that planted bombs in the Capitol and the Pentagon in the 1970s.”
Interesting. I didn’t know about that one.
Mark McKinnon = P*ssy
Open because that is exactly what he is. I find it ironic that the two Democrats who actually had minimal qualifications to be president (Biden and Richardson) were among the first ones forced out.
Notice how a lot of the hit pieces on Bambi originate with a foreign news source?
Blaming the Republicans for future attacks and then laying the strategy?
This is Clinton News-Laundering.
Nothing more.
No prejudice there
Hillary misses being presumptive.
Tarring him? What a racist thing for this reporter to say!
She needs to apologize and resign right now!
Barry Obama is :
#1) The MOST liberal U.S. Senator in 2007
#2) Completely lacking in military or foreign policy experience
The fact that he is an African-American, big-city socialist is the least of his problems.
...As far as I got.
Oddly enough, I just googled Obama and William Ayers, and found a detailed article on Obama’s relations to at least TWO terrorists, plus Tony Rezko.
I hate to say it, but this stuff can be found at the Huffington Post. I tried to find an alternate source, but this one is the most complete of those I turned up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-c-johnson/no-he-cant-because-yes_b_87036.html
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