Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

New Ayers ad push — 'Guilt by participation' (RNC not backing down?)
Politico ^ | 10/12/08 | Mike "I love Barack" Allen

Posted on 10/12/2008 1:55:00 PM PDT by pissant

The Republican Party on Monday morning will make a new push to convince voters that distant ties between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former radical William Ayers are somehow disqualifying for the presidency.

The Republican National Committee plans to e-mail “an audience of tens of millions” the link to a new video on the subject called “Guilt by Participation” and encourage recipients to forward it to friends and family, aides said.

“Barack Obama has no problem with forming relationships when politically convenient,” says the menacing narration, accompanied by brooding music.

The title comes from a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz, who wrote on Sept. 23: “The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming 'guilt by association.' Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation.”

The 80-second video ends with a new slogan, a variation of one Republicans have used in the past: “Barack Obama: Career First. Country Second.” The slogan is likely to be used again, officials say. The video flashes garish lettering like “WANTED BY FBI” and “DON’T REGRET SETTING BOMBS.”

The Obama campaign on Sunday released a roundup of media quotes headed “McCain's Strategy of Distracting From the Economy ... How's It Playing With Republicans?”: “In case you missed them, below are stories across the country voters are reading and hearing about McCain’s closing strategy, even conservative pundits, Republican officials and Republican voters are rejecting it."

Among those quoted was Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who said on “Fox News Sunday”: “[T]he main thing to say about these negative ads, which, I don’t think — almost none of them has been across the line — they haven't worked. Obama's favorable rating is as high as it's been in three months. It's actually gone up in the last month. So it's a stupid campaign.”

Republican officials don’t claim that the Ayers issue is moving numbers for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). A Republican official replied that the reason for the continued push is: “Ayers has been effective from the standpoint that it helps further doubts that already exist about Obama's judgment and how much we really know about him.”

The video begins: “Barack Obama. He launched his political career in the home of William Ayers, a 1970s domestic terrorist, a founder of the Weather Underground in the ‘60s.”

The Obama campaign released an ad Saturday saying he began his career at a Ramada Inn in Chicago, “not in anyone’s living room.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Republican House leader Rob Portman of Ohio defended the attention to Ayers: “I saw yesterday there had been nine different explanations about his relationship with Bill Ayers and when he met him and who he thought he was, and so on. And so that's the issue, is his judgment and his truthfulness.”

During a discussion about Ayers on “Fox News Sunday,” Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis: “[E]very single charge that you've thrown out has been debunked by FactCheck.org.”


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS: 2008; ayers; issues; itstheeconomystupid; larrysincalirslover; obama
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-55 last
To: pissant

I’m glad to see this issue is still being publicized by McCain/Palin. The general public still hasn’t been supplied with unfiltered facts about this. The media establishment is still trying to cover it up. Stanley Kurtz deserves a Pulitzer for his work on this.


41 posted on 10/12/2008 3:22:02 PM PDT by purplelobster
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: purplelobster

The public will never hear it or see it. If they do, they will never see it or understand it.


42 posted on 10/12/2008 3:28:05 PM PDT by KittenClaws
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: CharlotteVRWC

Ask all respondents how either candidate can possibly
fight 2 wars, fix the economy, and pay for future entitlement programs without raising taxes?
Let’s face it people, taxes will go up. Local and state
governments are already strained. Property and sales
taxes will have to be raised just to make sure that
your garbage is picked up and your children go to school.
The tax issue is not important at the federal level. All
politics are basically local.


43 posted on 10/12/2008 3:28:51 PM PDT by Elflord 7651
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: nhwingut
The Bill Ayers issue requires too much of a learning curve for most voters.

Not really. 1>) Bill Ayers is a terrorist. 2.) Bill Ayers bombed the Pentagon. 3.) Obama launched his career at Bill Ayers home. 4.) Obama called Bill Ayers a friend for years. The end. I agree 100%. But most of the voters really don't care because they are struggle with financial problems. People vote their pocketbooks over everything else.

44 posted on 10/12/2008 3:28:55 PM PDT by Military family member (GO Colts!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: OldNavyVet

My mom told me “You are known by the friends you keep”


45 posted on 10/12/2008 3:59:41 PM PDT by Hanna548
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: pissant

IMO the biggest problem with Ayers is his communist philosophy. That is what really needs to be hammered in addition to his terrorist acts because it is more relevant today in terms of the election. It can be tied to Obama’s New Party links.


46 posted on 10/12/2008 4:08:15 PM PDT by kabar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Military family member
Instead of wasting so much energy on Ayers, I want to see the RNC target specific points of Obama's plans. I want to see the McCain campaign be specific about how his plans for this nation are better than Obama's plans....Stick with the economy.

Ayers and his political philosophy have a lot to do with the economy and Obama's plans. Ayers is a communist/socialist. Obama has a similar view. These are the links that need to be made between Obama and Ayers. Do we want socialism or capitalism?

Toxic Trio! Ayers, Davidson, Klonsky Linked to Pro-Obama Organisation

Barack Obama, Danny K Davis and the Marxist New Party

47 posted on 10/12/2008 4:16:11 PM PDT by kabar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Maelstorm

These radicals are communists and socialists. That has a lot to do with the economy.


48 posted on 10/12/2008 4:17:48 PM PDT by kabar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: Military family member; Fred
Read the text of Ayers speech in Caracas, Venezuela November , 2006 with Hugo Chavez present:

This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.

I also thank my youngest son, Chesa Boudin, who is interpreting my talk this morning and whose book on the Bolivarian revolution has played an important part in countering the barrage of lies spread by the U.S. State Department and the corrupted Northamerican media.

I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!

I taught at first in something like a Simoncito—called Head Start—and eventually taught at every level in barrios and prisons and insurgent projects across the United States. I learned then that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space – what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?

Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.

Education contributes to human liberation to the extent that people reflect on their lives, and, becoming more conscious, insert themselves as subjects in history. To be a good teacher means above all to have faith in the people, to believe in the possibility that people can create and change things. Education is not preparation for life, but rather education is life itself ,an active process in which everyone— students and teachers– participates as co-learners.

Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.

The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem to his fellow writers called “The Poet’s Obligation” in which he instructed them in their core responsibility: you must, he said, become aware of your sisters and brothers who are trapped in subjugation and meaninglessness, imprisoned in ignorance and despair. You must move in and out of windows carrying a vision of the vast oceans just beyond the bars of the prison– a message of hope and possibility. Neruda ends with this: it is through me that freedom and the sea will call in answer to the shrouded heart.

Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.

Viva Mission Sucre! Viva Presidente Chavez! Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

49 posted on 10/12/2008 4:37:41 PM PDT by kabar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: pissant

That is really good...run it night and day...


50 posted on 10/12/2008 4:53:07 PM PDT by blasater1960 ( Dt 30, Ps 111, The Torah is perfect, attainable, now and forever)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kabar
Ayers and his political philosophy have a lot to do with the economy and Obama's plans. Ayers is a communist/socialist. Obama has a similar view. These are the links that need to be made between Obama and Ayers. Do we want socialism or capitalism? That's a Red Herring argument. Ayers does not hold office. He is not the head of a major bank. If you want to blame Ayers for this, then why not Eugene V. Debs?
51 posted on 10/12/2008 5:00:37 PM PDT by Military family member (GO Colts!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: pissant

Re-forming Chicago schools into communist re-education facilities.

Ayers Is No Education 'Reformer'

52 posted on 10/15/2008 10:21:24 PM PDT by XHogPilot
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Military family member
No, it's not working. There are bigger and better issues that should be discussed and brought to light.

Yes, it is working. The libs are screaming for McCain to focus on the "issues". But what's the point of doing that if Obama is just going to flat-out lie like he did repeatedly in the debate tonight?

McCain needs to call Obama on his lies and hammer him with his shady associates while presenting himself and Sarah Palin as reformers who will clean up Washington.

In other words, keep on keeping on.

The Dems wouldn't be screaming if it wasn't working.
53 posted on 10/15/2008 10:28:46 PM PDT by Antoninus (If you're bashing McCain/Palin at this point, you're helping Obama.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: pissant

And hit him on his outright lies about ACORN tonight -—he categorically denied that his campaign gave money to ACORN or any front group for ACORN!!!!! Pound him on this until he admits he lied!!!!!!!!!!!!!


54 posted on 10/15/2008 10:45:48 PM PDT by cookcounty (Sing together now.......".............Barack.........the Magic A---CORN.......".)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Antoninus
Let's the libs scream. Look at the polls. McCain gained more ground last night when he focused on economic issues than he did when spoke of Bill Ayers.

I've already cast my vote. I voted Monday for McCain. I will continue to campaign for McCain. I've been doing grassroots, door-to-door campaigning for McCain and other Republicans. I still think this tact is wrong. When I go to the door of an older voter, their concerns are financial. I've got little old ladies, widows, scared to death they are going to be kicked out of their houses. They don't care about Bill Ayers or the weather underground.

As for what the liberals are screaming about, why wouldn't they scream? The more people, and the media, keep focused on Bill Ayers, the more they don't focus on Obama's weak economic package. It's typical bait-and-switch.

If we're going to attack Obama, then let's attack ACORN. Why haven't any charging been brought in these cases, which are clearly illegal—Mickey Mouse has registered to vote hundreds of times, and a seven-year-old girl is suddenly registered in Connecticutt. These crimes are being committed now, and they can and will have a direct impact on this election, especially if we don't demand immediate investigations and arrests for voter fraud.

55 posted on 10/16/2008 5:03:53 AM PDT by Military family member (GO Colts!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-55 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson