Obama's "Radicalism" a Growing Chasm on Road to Victory

Townhall ^ | October 10, 2008 | Diana West

[2ndDivisionVet]

I realized something after Tuesday night's debate: If (big if) Barack Obama is not elected president next month, it will not be John McCain who defeats him.

McCain may be Obama's official opponent, but he isn't making the core case against him: namely, the case against Obama's deep roots in radicalism, which the Democratic nominee has never pulled up and grown away from. This is why if Obama loses on Election Day, it won't be McCain who defeats him. Like a flashy third-party candidate who ends up drawing just enough support from one candidate to put the other over the top, it is Obama's connections to anti-American extremism -- his incubation in a radical comfort zone home to ex-Weather Underground leader William Ayers, ex-PLO mouthpiece Rashid Khalidi, anti-white-and-anti-"middleclassness" minister Jeremiah Wright and others -- that will doom his presidential ambitions.

McCain, Obama and, coming up on the outside, Obama's radicalism: This three-way race has created a weird dynamic as the candidates turn into the final stretch. Blinkers on, McCain hobbles after Obama, who is now desperately trying to shake off the radicalism that could trip him up before the finish line. Again, no thanks to McCain, whose winks at Obama's radicalism, Sarah Palin's stumpside references notwithstanding, are not what has brought it to the fore. The fact is, Obama's ties to radicalism are taking on a life of their own.

Such a "life" is in no way documented in the mainstream media (MSM). Just consider our leading journalists' idea of professional responsibility when it comes to, for example, Obama's connection to unrepentant Pentagon bomber William Ayers.

Ayers -- a violent, 1960s militant who later decided that radicalizing education in the guise of "reform" was the front-line of revolution -- is infamous for a New York Times interview published on Sept. 11, 2001 in which he not only declared America "makes me want to puke," but also discussed his group's violent attacks on American military and civilian targets, asserting, "we didn't do enough." His working relationship with Obama, as documented by Stanley Kurtz, goes back to the 1990s when Obama served as chairman of a $150 million charity, which Kurtz describes as Ayers' "brainchild," that doled out money to far-left groups such as ACORN. Funny, as Kurtz has noted, Obama never mentioned these five years of what is his only executive experience in either of his two memoirs. Not so funny is Obama's dishonest description of Ayers as "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

MSM coverage of the relationship has been hardly more forthcoming. It runs from demonstrable whitewash -- as put over in the New York Times, which, in nixing notable ties, omitted all mention of copious, previously published evidence to the contrary -- to overt damage control, as conducted by the Associated Press. The AP actually argued that Palin's reference to the Obama-Ayers relationship as Obama "(palling) around with terrorists" conveyed a "racially tinged subtext." Huh? According to the AP, Palin's remarks were racist because "terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims." Therefore....

Are they kidding? In a word, no. But such efforts may signal a desperate response to growing, inchoate unease in the land, a silent, or sighing, or very privately discussed queasiness over the prospect of making an American president out of a man who not only didn't cross the street to shun a punk like Ayers, but was so comfortable with Ayers -- who, not incidentally, in 1995 described himself as "a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist" -- that Obama launched his political career from Ayers' living room, also in 1995.

This relationship continued, as even the New York Times perhaps inadvertently reported: Obama "said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005." Ask yourself: What American president -- any party, any era -- would have maintained correspondence with Mr. America "makes me want to puke" for that long? And about the year 2005: Isn't that roughly when Obama decided to run for president?

Americans may be fuzzy on the details -- and how could they be clear, given the media's pro-Obama activities -- but some are realizing, slowly and with no corroboration in the public square, that such radical ties don't pass presidential muster.

Or do they? In the end, the answer will decide the election. Meanwhile, we, the people, are on our own. Once, America's political and media and social institutions would have reflexively rejected a presidential candidate with an alliance with, or even an affinity for, an unrepentant terrorist and anti-establishment revolutionary. No more. The line between the establishment and the anti-establishment has vanished -- at least as far as our political and media and social institutions are concerned. But there remain citizens for whom such distinctions matter.

Writing at National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy pegged the significance of the Obama-Ayers connection: "Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him `want to puke.' The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental `change.' But what they're talking about," he wrote, referring to their complementary visions, "is not materially different. Such sentiments should make Obama unelectable."

Actually, such sentiments should make Obama radioactive. But ours is a culture of relativism in which one "belief system" is considered as valid as any other. Democracy? Marxism? Whatever! Lawful elections? Bombing the Pentagon? What's the difference? So greatly transformed by relativism is our society that not even elder statesman and veteran John McCain is alarmed by Obama's radicalism. If he were, this patriot who puts "country first," would be doing everything in his power to warn the American people against it.

Not that it matters, not now, not since Obama's radicalism entered the race. If this stalking horse finishes strong, Obama loses and America wins -- despite the other candidate.

[jddqr]

[Darkwolf377]

Your already decided it’s lost. You cannot see a win you said. You have kneeled before the MSM polling gods and given them that power. I will not kneel.

I don't give a damn what you do, to be perfectly honest, but you seem to think I'm sitting around wondering what you think about me. I don't. Bye.

[grey_whiskers]

Please give me examples of polls of registered voters which are known NOT to have cooked numbers.

(E.g. not just the numbers of Dems vs Pubs, but any mention of quotas or weighting factors...)

I have read over the past week some other pollsters point out that the polls simply do not exhibit volatility on the short time frames over which we have seen swings in this campaign--that this is indicative of shenanigans or secret sauce on the part of the pollsters.

Cheers!

[Antoninus]

If anybody is to take him down, it’s going to have to be us.

Amen. But emailing the McCain campaign with ideas and berating them for not doing what you tell them to do is completely counter-productive.

You want to win? Focus your efforts on spreading the word about Obama's radical ties to as many people as you possibly can. THAT will work.

Here's something to start with:

Farrakhan: When Obama speaks, the Messiah is talking.

[Darkwolf377]

Please give me examples of polls of registered voters which are known NOT to have cooked numbers.

How much time do you think I have on my hands? I work with a SWARM of libs I have to deprogram!

The other morning two of them were talking about the election, and I wish I had it recorded--they were ACTUALLY quoting ad material back and forth to each other as if they'd both done independent reading about the election. I just laughed at them--I had heard almost every line they said in ads!

[Antoninus]

Now, please step aside. The adults with backbone will take it from here.

Well said.

All the defeatists on FR need to go curl up under a desk and weep softly or something. They make me sick.

[Darkwolf377]

Hit POST too soon.

I look at tons of polls, and the first thing I do after seeing the results is look at the party breakdown. If it's insane--like the one with Obama up NINE that was some ridiculous number like 53-Dems, 29-Reps--I just move on.

[Antoninus]

Why would someone else's opinion cause you "despair"? How is that anything approaching an adult control of one's own emotions?

Why are you even here? Why not go spread your loser stink on some Obama site somewhere?

[Names Ash Housewares]

So long and take your deafeatism with you.

I will fight, I will never stop, and I will do so the rest of my life.

POLLS BE DAMNED.

I WILL be able to look myself in the mirror.
I will know, if Obama wins by a hair, I DID everything could.

Can YOU?

Can you posting defeatist content and demotiviating others?

[Names Ash Housewares]

I here she is on loan from the Justice League..........

Pollster Zod doesn't stand a chance.

[Darkwolf377]

Can you posting defeatist content and demotiviating others?

What a baby.

If you're so weak-willed that someone having a different opinion FRIGHTENS you to this extent, good luck to you. Your life must be so hard to get through if you throw a hissy fit over one person in a thousand here expressing a differing opinion.

Not one person will be "demotivated" by the appearance of a differing opinion.

And here I thought the free exchange of ideas was the reason we LOVE this country--not the robotic mental-marching - in-lockstep of the DUmmies.

Wow, get a spine, willya? And when you see one of my posts--don't read it. Or at least don't reply to it--it's wearying reading the whining of such faint-hearted wimps.

[Names Ash Housewares]

My spine is fine.

Yours says we will lose.

I will bet you $50.00 donation to the RNC that McCain wins.

[Darkwolf377]

My spine is fine. Yours says we will lose.

Uh, spines don't "say" anything. They don't speak.

I will bet you $50.00 donation to the RNC that McCain wins.

I'll take that bet. And seriously--I hope I get a mail message from you asking me to pay up. Really, I do!

[Names Ash Housewares]

I will be working hard to win that bet.

[Darkwolf377]

I’ll be working hard to lose it.

[grey_whiskers]

That's good, but there are other considerations.

Look for example, Georgia, which is as red as they get, but which RealClearPolitics calls "leaning" McCain.

The most recent poll there is Insider Advantage, which gives McCain as up by merely 3:

© InsiderAdvantage/Poll Position 2008 InsiderAdvantage/Poll Position polls are conducted by telephone with registered voters. Like all other major polling firms, data are weighted by age, race, gender and political party affiliation.

The weightings are NOT LISTED.

You can find the same almost everywhere, no matter where you go.

Cheers!

[Darkwolf377]

Of course. And some of the polls they put in these mixes are new, some days or weeks old. And they mix results from polls which ALWAYS use differing methodologies and samples and dates.

I'm aware of all this. But I still don't see the sunshine some here claim to see.

[right way right]

I think your analysis is right.
There are way too many Americans that will only give about 5 minutes of their time up to "research" the candidates before making their selection.

[grey_whiskers]

Garbage in Garbage Out.

Mixing a lot of slanted polls will not do any more for the final results than bundling sub-prime and Alt-A loans did for the bank's mortgage-backed securities. :-)

Look at McCain-Palin's crowds on the ground compared to Obama's. When Obama draws 10,000 or more there is usually a kegger or an A-list celebrity with him to draw crowds.

Listen to the newscasts of his speeches, he is not constantly interrupted by LOUD applause; look at the people in the bleachers behind him. They are NOT fired up.

And when people on the ground in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania report in, they say that in heavily Dem districts you see yard signs for the House/Senate Dem but NOT for Obama.

Put these things together.

Cheers!

[pburgh01]

We’ll you’ve taken a contrarian point of view, now quantify it. Gives us your analysis besides your own hunches why you think the polls are spot on.