The Slippery Senator

Townhall.com ^ | October 16, 2008 | Emmett Tyrrell

[Kaslin]

WASHINGTON -- How is it that Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been damaged badly by this financial crisis while the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, is presenting himself successfully as a financial genius capable of working Christ's miracle of the loaves and fishes on our economy?

The financial markets froze up because the Democrats prevailed on mortgage lenders -- mainly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac -- to relax standards against thitherto unqualified property buyers. They did it out of an ideological commitment to their thesis that poor people living in private homes would be better citizens. It was a noble vision. Yet it was economically untenable. A huge real estate bubble resulted, and now that the bubble has burst, the entire economy is imperiled.

Curiously, the Democrats have not suffered the consequences of their "deregulation" of the mortgage market. Instead, they have hung the "deregulation" canard on McCain. As the record makes clear, it is McCain who signed on to a letter with 19 other Republican senators in 2006 calling for the tightening up of Fannie's and Freddie's loans. Even before that, in the summer of 2005, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby fashioned a bill in the Senate Banking Committee to impose stricter regulations on Fannie and Freddie, only to see it blocked from getting to the Senate floor by a party-line vote, which kept it in committee. The Republicans favored this regulation tightening. The Democrats opposed it.

In an early example of his slipperiness, Sen. Obama stood with his fellow Democrats in opposing the bill. Then he went on record opposing his own vote by writing the secretary of the Treasury that subprime mortgages are dangerous. As has been said of other evasive politicians, Obama is a chameleon on plaid. Apparently, a chameleon on plaid can escape having the media hold him accountable even as he boldly opposes stricter regulations on subprime loans while writing the Treasury to oppose such loans. Yet how is it that the media have given the entire Democratic Party a pass on its advocacy of subprime loans?

As this election grinds on, I am reminded frequently that voters are not getting the whole story, that coverage is amazingly slanted toward an inexperienced Obama, who incidentally comes from a very dubious background. I have been especially aware of that since Sept. 26. That was when The American Spectator online reported that Sen. Obama's longtime political supporter and present national finance chairwoman gutted a Chicagoland bank by recklessly extending the kind of dubious loans that have caused today's financial crisis.

Penny Pritzker, from her position on the board of the holding company controlling Superior Bank, approved of risky loan practices that eventually cost depositors hundreds of millions of dollars. Superior had been unable to make money with traditional safe loans, so Pritzker encouraged the bank to enter the subprime market. Then she defied regulators who told her the bank's practices were reckless. After the bank failed in 2001 and government investigators examined the corpus delicti, the wealthy Pritzker family ended up paying $460 million in penalties over a 15-year period.

Nonetheless, when it came to selecting his finance chair, candidate Obama chose Penny Pritzker. Now, with not a peep of recognition from the media, he abominates Wall Street for practices she pioneered. He claims Republican aversion to regulation led to this financial crisis. Yet the record is clear. In the financial sector, it is the Republicans who favored regulation and the Democrats who thwarted it. If the media remain mum on all this, these same Democrats will control two branches of the federal government soon. Maybe they will make Penny Pritzker secretary of the Treasury.

[Islander7]

"...WE ALL MUST DO THE FOLLOWING TO AT LEAST 2 DIFFERENT PEOPLE A DAY BETWEEN NOW AND THE ELECTION:

Ask a person who’s considering voting for Obama to pick up a copy of the Yellow Pages. How many of those businesses do they think make over 250K? How many people in the area work for all those companies together? Restaurants, Plumbers, Paving companies, Hardware stores, everything. How many family members depend on those incomes?...."

Our very own FReeper Extraordinaire, Jeff Head, has prepared a side by side comparison of Obama's plans and McCain's.

[ Disclaimer: Information is current as of Oct 1, 2008. Much has changed since then, but the basics remain the same. ]

Print it, pass to your friends after your yellow pages talk. Email the link to all your contacts.

OBAMA-MCCAIN ISSUE COMPARISON CHART

Obama is a cheat scape!

[shezza]

It’s all that snake oil he’s peddling.

[A_perfect_lady]

They did it out of an ideological commitment to their thesis that poor people living in private homes would be better citizens.

You know, encouraging private ownership isn't just a Democratic value...

[NELSON111]

Liberals are great at giving away other people’s money.

[Free Vulcan]

One thing I wish McCain would have done was point out that Obama was on the legal team where ACORN sued Citibank to force them to lend to low income families.

[Christian4Bush]

mark

[gridlock]

McCain needs to tie Obama and the Democrats to the financial melt-down. The falling markets are killing him in the polls. Fortunately, the facts are on McCain’s side. He just has to get them out there.

The Community Reinvestment Act was a ticking time bomb, and was made worse under Clinton.

“Community Organizers” like ACORN gleefully blackmailed banks, forcing them to make way too many loans that could never be repaid. Obama is closely tied to ACORN on many levels.

Democrats protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Congress, and were richly rewarded with campaign cash and sweetheart loans as “Friends of Angelo”. Yes, a few bad-apple Republicans will be caught by this charge, but John McCain is certainly not one of them. If they took the cash, they deserve to take the hit anyway.

Slumlord Developer Tony Rezko was up to his eyeballs in this mess, and gave Obama a sweetheart deal on his house.

John McCain tried to rein in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but was opposed by the Democrats in Congress, including Barack Obama. Even though Obama knew that they were heading for a fall, as evidenced by the fact that he felt the need to write a CYA memo to the Secretary of the Treasury. This letter had no effect of law. McCain’s proposal would have had an effect. Obama was covering himself by voting “Present” on this crisis.

John McCain has been in the trenches trying to solve this problem, and Barack Obama has been phoning it in. And then the Obama campaign has the chutzpah to say that McCain is panicked and erratic as he tries to move the legislative process toward a conclusion.

These are the facts. McCain has to make sure people know who is responsible for this mess

[cookcounty]

Obama Categorically Lied about His Campaign Giving Money to ACORN!!!!!!!!

Why is this not a big issue???

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[Major Matt Mason]

The real problem is that the ladies' club running the GOP has no ability to form a good defense of their belief in the free market system that this country is built upon. Instead, they worry about being labeled racists rather than point out the truth of how this financial mess came about. In this sense, they have their perfect candidate for this election, a moderate incapable of defining what he believes in. This is what happens when you put moderates in charge of things.