Dan Proft: Will Obama Get "Swift-boated"?

Urquhart Media, LLC ^ | May 9, 2008 | Dan Proft

[JulianaJohnson]

While Archimedes-in-a-pantsuit tries to rewrite the laws of mathematics, the rest of the nation has properly begun to weigh the Presidential contest between Sens. McCain and Obama.

Obama has, however, learned a valuable Clinton trick from this protracted primary--how to obliquely reference the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" to misdirect people's attention away from glaring, personal deficiencies.

During his victory speech in North Carolina on Tuesday night Obama said, "We know what's coming...the same names and labels they (Republicans) pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all of their ideas."

Actually, we have some new names and labels thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Obama's own words and ideas, as well as the Senator's cozy relationships with corrupt influence peddlers, domestic terrorists, and a hateful, bile-spewing spiritual advisor.

That right-wing conspiracy shtick--being "Swift-boated"--is going to work out about as well for Obama as it did for Clinton and for the same reason-because it is without merit.

"Swift-boated" has been added to our political lexicon by the Left to lament the alleged unfair attacks to which John Kerry was subjected in the 2004 Presidential race.

And yet, it was John Kerry who made his military service an issue. He sought to use his service to distinguish himself from President Bush and to characterize both Bush and Cheney as reckless chicken-hawks.

It was John Kerry who saluted the nation nearly four years ago and said, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." It was John Kerry who brought several of those with whom he had served in Vietnam on stage at the Democrat National Convention to show them off to the country.

On the contrary, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were effective with their anti-Kerry message because it was a substantive one. The facts were on their side. The fact was that Kerry's entire chain of command, every officer under whom Kerry served in Vietnam, questioned his fitness to be Commander-in-Chief. Many Kerry detractors were Democrats but they were also proud and decorated veterans who believed that Kerry had acted dishonorably and that his campaign was being run disingenuously. Theirs was a legitimate perspective for the country to hear.

Similarly, it is Barack Obama who has presented as his core argument that he possesses the superior judgment to be President. That demands a thorough examination of both his personal history and professional record.

The process demands and will extract the same from John McCain.

So as we begin the compare and contrast on the matter of the two men's judgment, at the behest of Obama, consider these two snapshots at a watershed moment in each one's life:

At the same respective points in their lives as grown men in their early 30s, Obama decided to sidle up to Chicago political machine bosses and their financiers and the chichi Hyde Park set of pseudo-intellectual socialists to advance his political career. That earned Obama an appointment to a State Senate seat in 1996.

At a similar age, John McCain made an important decision as well. He decided to forgo his early release from a North Vietnamese POW camp, an offer extended to him because of his father's position in the military. McCain would not walk unless the other POWs who had been captured before him were also released. That earned McCain an additional five years of torture in a Viet Cong prison camp and, for all he knew at the time, was a decision that would cost him his life.

What would you have done if presented with the same offer with which McCain was presented?

What do you think Barack Obama would have done as you have watched him over the last couple of months provide ever-evolving answers and, ultimately, denunciation of his 20-year pastor (only because Rev. Wright wasn't properly concerned about Obama's campaign)?

These snapshots of course do not tell the whole story of either man, but they do tell an important part of the story for each, about the values that have informed their lives.

Call it "Swift-boating" if you want but Obama's ethereal campaign will be done in by his own bad judgments measured against the very standard he has set to define the race for President.

[CholeraJoe]

And any man voting for Obama is an emasculated wuss.

Or a Republican trying to destroy the Wicked Witch of the East. I beg your pardon, I voted for Obama in the Indiana Primary Tuesday.

[philled]

Dan Proft: Will Obama Get "Swift-boated"?

I doubt it. Unless Obambi claims that he threw his service medals and purple heart over the fence, I think he is safe. I don't think we will see men who served on the river with Barry Obama in Viet Nam will come out to question his leadership and tall tales of bravado in Cambodia. Maybe John Kerry can lend him his hat.

However, I hope that because Obambi has such a limited record and seems to demonstrate a penchant for surrounding himself with unsavory characters that someone does come forward to question his judgement. And his ideology. And his theology. And everything else...

[griswold3]

“vast, right-wing conspiracy”

That’s ‘vast (W)right wing conspiracy”.

[Elsiejay]

Swift boating means revealing truths about a Dim Rat candidate, truths about events or actions that he/she has refused to reveal or has taken affirmative steps to conceal.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Yep. By the Clinton machine.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

The defintion of “swiftboating” = when the truth is told about democrats, but the MSM claims its all part of a vast right wing conspiracy.

The democrats are petrified about it after what it did to Lurch’s “reporting for duty” campaign and will use to term whenever the truth is reported about one of their candidates.

[weegee]

Can you repost that without the Corbis photo? They don’t permit FR to use it. But they did let Snopes get away with HOSTING the image and even HOSTING the gag composite image that has no copyright (it was used largely to discredit the validity of the Corbis image).

And Bill Gates’ Corbis never did much to stop the fake that added GW Bush to the photo of Kerry with Fonda.

Corbis sucks. But keep their legal team away from FR....

[exit82]

Obama can’t be “Swift-boated”

He just isn’t that swift.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

Billary threw Lurch under the Bus in 2004 to keep him out of the whitehouse so she could run in 2008. They will do it again to Obama this year if he gets the nomination. Expect an october surprise on Obama to come out. And its going to be coming from camp Billary, not the GOP. But the media will claim Obama is being swiftboated by the GOP when it happens.

[BARLF]

I didn't see pocketbook winning in 2004. Economy was good, yet dems took congress.

Why?

[Eye On The Left]

"This man is a communist."

And a Muslim radical.

Obama is not a Muslim! But just like all the hard left, he is allied with Muslim extremists because they both see the U.S as their enemy. Communists are not exactly religious. That is, unless you consider Marxism a religion.

Amazon Book Review:
"Vastly Illuminating!" September 25, 2004
By Kat Bakhu

"I had long wondered why people on the Left had the propensity to speak more positively about people who would slit their throats than they do about their own country, which affords them more freedom and opportunity than anywhere else. David Horowitz has answered that question thoroughly and convincingly in his Unholy Alliance. Where I felt bewildered and confused, I now feel crystal clear. Unholy Alliance is such a great book.

It begins with the leftist movements at the beginning of the 20th Century, and works its way up to the present day, exploring the anti-American attitude of these movements in detail. Horowitz shows that the enemies of the US back then are largely the same group today, operating under the same misperceptions, making the same mistakes, and pursuing the same impossible utopia.

Individual chapters are included on the Patriot Act (I was persuaded that it is a GOOD thing); the democratic flip-flop on Iraq once G.W. Bush implemented what they agreed with Clinton needed to be done; the driving components of the current anti-war movement; as well as chapters on individual personalities who are major spokespeople of the Left. Horowitz covers a lot of ground, and he covers it concisely and clearly. Unholy Alliance is richly informative without ever being boring or plodding.

This book is so illuminating that I simply cannot do justice to it here. I love people who reason so clearly that they help me get my own reasoning clear. Horowitz is just that type of person! In the terrain of mindless clichés (no-blood-for-oil, etc.), he is a breath of real fresh air."

http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/089526076X

[Red Badger]

You mean 2006......

[BARLF]

Yes, sorry........

[Eye On The Left]

Can you repost that without the Corbis photo? They don’t permit FR to use it. But they did let Snopes get away with HOSTING the image...

Thanks. I didn't know that. I was wondering why the moderator removed my post.

In any case, here it is again without the photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda attending the same pro-communist ("anti-war") event together.

_____________________________________________________________

Re: "Will Obama Get 'Swift-boated'?"

Do you mean, “Will the truth come out about Obama?”

But even with John Kerry, nobody really exposed his close ties to the pro-communist "anti-war" groups of the late sixties and early seventies. And many of these organizations openly admitted they were supporting the VietCong. So they weren't really opposed to war. They were opposed to America WINNING the war.

Note John Kerry's name at top right of The New Soldier

Jane Fonda and John Kerry at an "anti-war" rally in Valley Forge, Pa.
The photo is for real:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp

November 22, 1970 -- During a fund-raising tour for GI deserters, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Black Panthers, Jane Fonda is quoted in the Detroit Free Press as telling a University of Michigan audience:

"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist," and "The peace proposal of the Viet Cong is the only honorable, just, possible way to achieve peace in Vietnam."

http://www.wintersoldier.com/index.php?topic=Timeline

Fonda made the following statement at the University of Texas:

"We've got to establish a Socialist economic structure that will limit private profit-oriented businesses. Whether the transition is peaceful depends on the way our present governmental leaders react. We must commit our lives to this transition ...... We should be very proud of our new breed of soldier. It's not organized but it's mutiny, and they have every right." --Karen Elliott Dallas Morning News December 11, 1971

John Kerry and the VVAW--Hanoi's American Puppets?

"Two recently discovered documents captured from the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War strongly support the contention that a close link existed between the Hanoi regime and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) while John Kerry served as the group's leading national spokesman."
http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=puppets

[Eye On The Left]

Oops! The link to the Kerry/VVAW article apparently is no longer valid. Here's another:

"Enemy documents from 1971 show that Vietnamese communists guided the American antiwar movement via meetings between the communist delegations to the Paris Peace talks and American antiwar activists. John Kerry and the VVAW were working toward the exact goals set forth in the communist directives.

Read about it in John Kerry and the VVAW: Hanoi's American Puppets? by Dr. Jerome Corsi and Scott Swett."
http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=puppets

Also see:
http://www.wintersoldier.com/

[BFM]

swift-boat - Pronunciation [swift'-boht]

–verb 1. To tell or defend the truth.
2. to provide factual information about another person when that information is found to be factually incorrect or a lie.
3. to present evidence of a politician’s lies.
4. to identify false statements of military service or combat injuries.
5. to document accurately.
6. to serve proudly in the US military.

–noun
8. a small watercraft used by the US Navy in the late 20th Century.

[steve-b]

McCain was stupid enough to politically court a pastor who’s in the habit of (for example) spewing “Whore Of Babylon” rhetoric against Catholics.

[Santiago de la Vega]

I’m shocked.

Archimedes was one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived.

How dare you link that shit-heel hillbilly with him?

Of course, it’s funny as hell.

Well done.