Free Republic

Obama’s own voice may haunt him By: David Mark and Kenneth P. Vogel July 6, 2008 07:14 AM EST Barack Obama has proven a difficult target to hit—just ask Hillary Clinton. Opposition researchers, though, hope that they’ve found a weapon to wound Obama in his own voice as recorded for the Grammy Award-winning audio version of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” While candidates often have their own words turned against them in attack ads, it’s one thing to see past statements in bloc text and something else entirely to hear the same words in the office-seeker’s own voice....

Barack Obama has proven a difficult target to hit—just ask Hillary Clinton. Opposition researchers, though, hope that they’ve found a weapon to wound Obama in his own voice as recorded for the Grammy Award-winning audio version of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” While candidates often have their own words turned against them in attack ads, it’s one thing to see past statements in bloc text and something else entirely to hear the same words in the office-seeker’s own voice.

The Talk Shows Sunday, July 6th, 2008 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Media panel.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): pre-empted by coverage of Wimbledon tennis.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.THIS WEEK (ABC): Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut; Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate.LATE EDITION (CNN) : Retrospective on the show's 10th anniversary.

In order to pass their political driving test, successful politicians need to be masters of one tricky manoeuvre in particular - the U-turn. The contenders in this year's US presidential election are no exceptions - both John McCain and Barack Obama have engaged in some nifty repositioning. Mr McCain's U-turns have mostly increased his appeal to the Republican Party's base, placing him on a rightward trajectory. Barack Obama has been performing a more traditional manoeuvre: running to the left during the primaries, when party activists need to be wooed, then shifting to the centre once the nomination is clinched. Flip-flopping...

Sen. John McCain is making surprising headway with religious conservatives - that part of the Republican electoral coalition he was expected to find the most resistant. For a campaign that Republican critics have called ill-managed, disorganized and message-challenged, the Arizona senator's organization has, from all outward appearances, been doing things right in its appeals to evangelicals and other religious conservatives. In the past week, Mr. McCain won over a major group of social conservatives, thanks to personal appeals, and the campaign has made personnel moves appealing to religious voters. In Denver last week, a meeting of nearly 100 religious conservative...

Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote, wrote this week, “At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, it’s not just about Barack Obama, it’s about us.” Smith seeks to rebut the sense that the youth-vote craze is Obama-driven. She’s right. Youth vote hype has been around. In 2004, when “meetups” were the rage, Rock the Vote preened and registered more than a million voters. In 2006, they pounced on Facebook’s social networking and Heather gushed, “Once young people are registered to vote, it is easy for campaigns and candidates to target and turn them out to the polls.” Oh, the...

Two weeks ago, Newsweek released a poll showing Barack Obama 15 points ahead of John McCain. Days later, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll showed a similar gap. Yet over at Gallup, the daily tracking poll showed the two presumptive presidential nominees remain in a statistical tie, although early last week Obama did start to break a nickel ahead of McCain. The question that arises for the average person watching this race is, why the zero to 15-point difference in polling data? Is one poll more accurate than the other? “All polls are not created equally,” says Republican pollster Neil Newhouse....

Sen. John McCain should be the next president of the United States. He is wrong on many issues - global warming, campaign finance-reform and immigration (to name a few). But on the central challenges of our time, he has demonstrated the judgment and courage necessary to be the leader of the Free World. In comparison to his Democratic rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama, the Republican maverick is clearly the better man - and the better candidate. ..... Mr. McCain is the very opposite of Mr. Obama. The Arizona Republican is a battle-hardened war hero, who spent five...

...By his own admission, Mr. McCain is not a great orator. He is ill-suited to lecterns, which often dwarf his small stature, and he tends to sound as if he is reading his lines, not speaking them. His shortcomings have been accentuated in a two-man race, particularly because the other man — Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee — can often dazzle on stage. Mr. McCain and his advisers know that Mr. Obama’s ability to excite huge crowds will make for an inevitable podium mismatch for the older, softer-spoken Republican. “We’re going up against a guy who is off...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/patriotism-ndash-last-refuge-of-scoundrels-and-undoing-of-democratic-candidates-860886.html

WASHINGTON — What if your family was planning a big end-of-summer bash (a Grand Old Party, you might call it) but preferred that you not be seen — or heard? That is the question hanging over President Bush, with eight weeks to go until Republicans gather in St. Paul to nominate Senator John McCain as his successor. Convention planners, the White House and the McCain campaign are wrestling with how to choreograph a proper send-off for Mr. Bush — sure, his poll numbers are in the tank, but he is still the party leader and president of the United States...

ST. LOUIS Sen. Barack Obama declared Saturday to a roaring crowd of religious African-Americans at the America's Center that they should have no doubt of his commitment to his Christian faith, his nation or his political principles. In an address filled with religious and patriotic imagery, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president told delegates attending a national conference here of the African Methodist Episcopal Church that his career and his life revolved around his belief that "I won't be fulfilling the Lord's Will unless I'm doing the Lord's work.'' That commitment would continue to influence his performance and his politics...

For the first time, the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is about to get a substantial hand from advertisements by an outside group. Conservative and Republican groups have been largely quiet, leaving McCain heavily outmatched by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign fundraising juggernaut. Next week, Vets for Freedom — a 20,000-member, nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — plans to begin spending more than $1 million on a TV campaign that will include Ohio, Virginia and New Mexico. The group plans to spend millions more and to add other states to the...

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline. The Democrats’ base -- wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people -- won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated. The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to...

SOURCE Video, charts, audio, and text at the site.

Libertarian voters make up 4% of the nation’s likely voters and they favor Barack Obama over John McCain by a 53% to 38% margin. Three percent (3%) would vote for some other candidate and 5% are not sure.

More anti-war figures are voicing their opinions about contradictory and confusing statements regarding Iraq made Thursday by presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama, and the news is clearly not good for his campaign. One such concerned party is Tom Hayden, the famed ex-husband of Jane Fonda who, along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, was part of the Chicago Seven that incited riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In an Apr. 10 interview with The Advocate magazine, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said "homophobic" messages are coming from the pulpits of black churches because "most African-American churches are still fairly traditional in their interpretations of Scripture." In the same interview, Obama praised the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and long-time spiritual adviser, for being on the right side of the homosexual debate. ... Obama volunteered that his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was "very good on gay and lesbian issues." ... Black leaders and clregy reacted to Obama's remarks to The Advocate, saying they contradict the...

Re: "swiftboating" From StreetInsider.com, July 3, 2008: "The 'Swiftboating' slogan is used by leftist politicians and members of the old media to smear the Swift Vets and other anti-Kerry veterans as liars. The truth is that they were effective because they supported their charges with evidence. A second goal of this tactic is to preempt any criticism of Sen. Obama and the other Democrats they are trying to elect - however accurate and relevant such criticism may be," said Scott Swett, the primary author of To Set the Record Straight. Source: Authors of New Book on Swift Boat Veterans for...

Let’s leave aside for a moment General Weasley Clark’s increasingly embarrassing attempts to defend his “Face the Nation” claim that “his hero” John McCain is actually unqualified for the presidency. When asked by a half-dozen interviewers to specify one area in which his candidate, Barack Obama, is actually MORE qualified than McCain, the Weasley One always returns to the same word – “judgment.” Obama’s qualified, in other words, because he displayed better judgment than McCain on the issue of the Iraq War. But there’s an obvious follow-up to this argument that General Clark hasn’t yet faced.. He suggests that “judgment”...

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" Obama was doing here by inference what many of his supporters do more explicitly. Obama's candidacy, in their view, puts American voters to the test: Are they open-minded enough to vote for a black candidate? Or are they still so overcome by racial prejudice as to reject the first black candidate with a serious chance to win? There are obviously problems with this....

IT'S OFFICIAL: THE BEAR HAS ARRIVED. The Dow Jones Industrial Average last week qualified for the widely accepted definition of a bear market of a 20% drop from the highs. The good news is that once the decline reaches that arbitrary 20% mark, based on history, the market has suffered most of its losses. The bad news is that the decline typically drags on for some time, and time may be the worst enemy. Investors may initially try to grab erstwhile highfliers that have crashed and burned but rarely regain their former status. And as the decline wears down investors'...

In an ominous trend for Obama, only 54% of Hillary voters will vote for Obama and 1/3 will stay home. Maybe the Messiah is running low on Kool-Aid.

~snip~ Half of all living Americans today were born after McCain's A4E Skyhawk was shot down in an attempted bombing run on the Yen Phu power plant. Thus his story here bears retelling. ~snip~ The McCain story is unambiguously heroic. ~snip~ The only chance Democrats have is to turn the page. For them, victory lies in the fact that a new generation is about to take over American politics. In a provocative new book, Morley Winograd and Michael Hais identify today's young voters as millennials - the largest generation in American history, bigger even than the baby boom. About a...

I don't necessarily like his policies; but … history thrusts me to really seriously think about it [voting for Obama]. … Black conservatives tell me privately it would be very hard to vote against him in November. – Armstrong Williams, talk show host Recent comments by well-known black Republicans J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams that they're conflicted about the upcoming presidential elections and are contemplating voting for Barack Obama have sent shock waves through the Republican Party. I'm hearing many black Republicans echoing similar sentiments. They say that because of the historical significance of casting a vote for the first...

One week after Sen. Hillary Clinton made a public show of unity with Sen. Barack Obama, a new survey suggests supporters of the New York senator are increasingly less likely to follow her lead. A growing number of Clinton supporters polled say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, an indication the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton...

More ties to the radical left have surfaced in Barack Obama's past. The latest stem from his involvement with the activist group, ACORN... ACORN...is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. Obama was a member of ACORN and taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland... Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns. He has now done the same in his bid for the USA presidency... So what is ACORN all about? In a Spring 2003 article for...

It was perverse -- not to mention tone-deaf and foolish -- for Barack Obama's supporters to pick the week of July Fourth to attack John McCain's military background. The cliche rings true: With political friends like these, Obama doesn't need enemies. First up was retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who told CBS' "Face the Nation" that "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." That was tame compared with a vile posting by the nut-roots liberal Americablog.com headlined "Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in...

An Atlanta pollster thinks a potentially significant number of people who say they'll vote for Barack Obama won't. David Johnson raised the issue as he discussed his latest Strategic Vision Poll, which shows the Democratic presidential candidate trailing in Georgia. Nationally, Mr. Obama is ahead of Republican candidate John McCain by several percentage points in most surveys. "I think we'll have a Bradley-Wilder effect," Mr. Johnson said Wednesday, referring to two former black Democratic candidates: Tom Bradley, who lost the 1982 race for California governor even though polls just before Election Day said he had a double-digit lead, and Douglas...

John McCain will spend the coming week talking about the economy, but the Republican presidential candidate isn't expected to say anything new. Rather, he will repackage proposals he has already outlined -- ones the campaign fears nobody heard. "We don't think we've made the case eloquently," Doug Holtz-Eakin, the campaign's policy director, said. The goal is to put out a consistent message each day that can penetrate voters' minds. The ability to control a certain story line through a 24-hour news cycle is seen as one element of a successful modern political campaign and, so far, Sen. Obama has been...

One week after Hillary Clinton made a public show of unity with Barack Obama, a new survey suggests supporters of the New York senator are increasingly less likely to follow her lead. A growing number of Clinton supporters say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, a clear sign the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close. According to a new survey from CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation, the number of...

Sen. Barack Obama spoke on the subject of patriotism this past week in an effort to undo some of the damage he has already inflicted on his own image -- through his associations, his statements and policy positions -- and to obscure his liberalism. Liberals rightly feel defensive about their patriotism because they always seem to find themselves blaming the United States for this or that, exhorting us to be more like the "enlightened" nations of Europe or forever shouting that we are a "laughing stock" in the eyes of other nations. It was not a conservative who wrote in...

The John McCain campaign ... installed Steve Schmidt, until now an ultraintense counselor to the campaign, as its operations manager. Mr. Schmidt has a reputation for ruthless efficiency, a take-no-prisoners campaign style and the ability to inspire confidence in subordinates. Karl Rove once dubbed him "The Bullet," a reference to both the shape of his shaved head and his lethal impact when deployed against opponents. Starting with a stint on Capitol Hill as communications director for the House Republican campaign effort, the 37-year-old Mr. Schmidt has had a meteoric rise in politics. He became a counselor to Vice President Dick...

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Character is defined as the essence of a person and determines a person's judgment, or what a person will do when no one is looking. Dr. King's admonishment is relevant during this 2008 election, and black Americans should evaluate the candidates based on competence to be our Commander in Chief, not skin color....

Over at The Nation's political blog, John Nichols reports on efforts by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to get steelworkers and other union members to throw their support behind a black presidential candidate: Trumka knew that the steelworkers had backed John Edwards for this year's Democratic presidential nomination -- and that the union had only endorsed Obama when Edwards finally came around. He understood that a part of his job was to get a union that is especially strong in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania excited about a candidate who must win those states. Trumka knew, as well, that...

The Terminator's Terminator The John McCain campaign decided it had to do something completely different on Wednesday as it finally reacted to a chorus of complaints that its message was muddled, its public events uneven and its organization lagging. It installed Steve Schmidt, until now an ultraintense counselor to the campaign, as its operations manager. Mr. Schmidt has a reputation for ruthless efficiency, a take-no-prisoners campaign style and ability to inspire confidence in subordinates. Karl Rove once dubbed him "The Bullet," a reference to both the shape of his shaved head and his lethal impact when deployed against opponents. He...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama has a dominant lead over Republican John McCain among Hispanic voters, despite his struggle to woo the key bloc during his presidential primary campaign, a poll found Wednesday. A Gallup survey put Obama up 59 percent to 29 percent over his rival among registered Hispanic voters across the United States. The community will likely play a pivotal role in general election swing states like Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. The poll was published as McCain made a three-day trip through Colombia and Mexico, designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials, which was also seen...

WASHINGTON (June 25, 2008) – Obama’s decision to use only private donations for his campaign mandates that he be more transparent about his fundraising, the groups wrote. McCain’s continued reliance on private money until his party’s nominating convention also underscores the need for greater disclosure. The eight groups urge the candidates to disclose more complete information about donors to set a high standard of campaign funding transparency for future presidential candidates. Specifically, the groups ask the candidates to divulge on their campaign websites the exact amounts that bundlers raise for their official campaign committees and joint fundraising committees that benefit...

McCain Should Play 'Pin Obama on the Donkey' Jonah Goldberg Hoping that the third time really is the charm, the McCain campaign has had yet another staff shakeup. As befits a press corps and Republican professional class always eager to gain favor and access to the newest man in charge, the accolades for the latest campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, are nothing short of superlative. The argument that Schmidt is the right man for the job centers on the fact that he's a no-nonsense type who enjoys taking the fight to the enemy. That's good news given how much nonsense has...

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah!First the good news: Watch and listen to a beautiful patriotic song written by Iraq Vet Eric Keller dedicated to the the service of our brave veterans. "Patriot" From the sublime to the pitiful. . . America has never seen in its history such blatant attempts by a political party to undermine and subvert the populace and the military in a time of war. Soon after the United States stunning and overwhelming ousting of the Saddam regime in Iraq - with Demokrat...

Barack Obama is leading John McCain by five percentage points in Montana. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while McCain earns 43%.

A good sign for the McCain camp from an absolutely essential constituency. It's not so much that these leaders can move thousands of votes, but to have them off the reservation and teeing up unhelpful quotes for the next four months would have been a huge problem for the GOP. Reports Michael Scherer: At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movement that bodes well for McCain's general election prospects among...

One way to envision the McCain-Obama presidential race is as a boxing match — particularly like the famous Mohammed Ali championship fights. The deliberate McCain is like a Sonny Liston or George Foreman trying to cut the ring in half and force his lighter-footed opponent onto the ropes. For McCain, this comes in the form of numerous proposed town-hall debates, where he hopes that face-to-face questions and answers will fall on his less-seasoned opponent like sudden haymakers. In turn, Obama is like Ali; his style is to keep moving — and stay out of reach of his opponent. Obama does...

McCain Allies Find Finance-Law Holes Governors' Fund Recruits Big Donors; Bid to Catch Obama Allies of Sen. John McCain have found new loopholes in the campaign-finance law he helped write -- and they're using them to reel in huge contributions to help him compete with Sen. Barack Obama. In one method, a Republican Party fund aimed at electing governors has started marketing itself as a home for contributions of unlimited size to help Sen. McCain. His 2002 campaign law limits donations to presidential races to try to curtail the influence of wealth. The Republican Governors Association isn't subject to those...

Progressive Democratic Group Attempting To Bribe Barack Obama Progressives are once against eating their own. There is a progressive Democratic Group that is encouraging their members to create an "escrow" fund with pledged donations to Barack Obama that he will not receive unless he conforms to the behavior they want of him. Recently Congress passed an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), with a 293 to 129 vote, which included a very controversial issue to provide immunity to telecommunications companies that provided data to the U.S. administration. That bill is to be considered in the U.S. Senate and...

I was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week when Newsweek's Jonathan Alter asked me, "Is Obama a sellout?" The question isn't whether he is a sellout -- it's about what demands are made by grass-roots social movements of those who would represent them. The question is, who are these candidates responding to, answering to? Richard Nixon's strategy was to run in the primaries to the right, then move to the center in the general election. Bill Clinton's strategy was "triangulation," navigating to a political "Third Way" to please moderates and undecided voters. This past week, Barack...

Barack Obama is leading John McCain by five percentage points in Montana. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while McCain earns 43%. In April, the numbers were reversed with McCain leading 48% to 43%. That was before Obama clinched the Democratic nomination and defeated Hillary Clinton by fifteen points in Montana. Fifty percent (50%) of Montana Democrats want Clinton named as Obama’s running mate. Just 29% of all Montana voters would like to see Clinton as the Vice Presidential nominee. Against McCain, Obama leads among voters under 50, including a...

In an election today in Indiana, Barack Obama takes 48% of the vote, John McCain 47% of the vote -- a statistical tie -- according to this latest SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for WHAS-TV Louisville and WCPO-TV Cincinnati. Obama's 1-point lead is within the survey's 4 percentage point margin of sampling error,

Lagging behind his Democratic rival in opinion polls and facing Republican complaints about a lacklustre campaign, Senator John McCain has ordered another major shake-up of his campaign staff. Exactly a year after a previous overhaul, the presumptive Republican nominee has marginalised Rick Davis, the campaign manager he put in place then, and handed day-to-day control to a hard-charging veteran of President George W Bush's 2004 successful re-election bid. Steve Schmidt, a shaven-headed, barrel-chested operative known as "the Bullet", has a reputation for aggressive attacking and counter-attacking. His promotion signals a greater willingness by Mr McCain to assail Senator Barack Obama,...

Story after story in the last few days have proclaimed, “Romney top choice for VP” — and along those lines are also many quotes of Romney backers who warn they are holding off on their support for Senator Maverick, especially financially, until he puts Romney on the ticket. Mitt wins practically every poll when asked by voters who they wish to see as Vice President, most recently advancing to the Finals in the popular online MSNBC veepstakes poll (click here to vote for Mitt). So, Team McCain pay attention — there is an army of supporters waiting to help you...