Today's News & Views
June 23, 2008
 
Asking for a Mulligan

Editor's note. Please send any comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

"Any of the attempts to describe him inaccurately he takes head-on with the new commercial," said Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest friends and confidants. "You begin a new campaign with an introduction. You can't presume that everybody was paying attention during the primary season. So let's start with basics. He describes his roots, his philosophy, his love of country. That's a really good start."
     As quoted in this morning's Washington Post.

As the saying goes this would be funny if it weren't so serious. Pro-abortion (times two to the nth power) Sen. Barack Obama is launching an 18-state ad buy to "reintroduce himself to voters," according to the headline that accompanies the story written by the Post's Dan Balz and Anne Kornblut. Those 18 will include the usual toss-up states as well as others which have normally voted Republican for president in the recent past. This enormous expenditure reflects Obama's virtually bottomless financial resources.

The Obama for-public-consumption explanation is two-sided. Heads--people really don't know the junior senator from Illinois, they say, suggesting there is a vacuum of information, despite the longest run-up to a presidential election in recorded history.

Tails (as illustrated by the new 60-second ad about to be unveiled)--"Obama acknowledged ongoing concerns among his advisers that voters do not know whether he shares the values and beliefs of ordinary Americans, a potentially critical vulnerability," write Balz and Kornblut. "The ad speaks to the reality that enough questions were raised about Obama through the long nomination battle that he needs to address them."

An essential part to date of the very successful Obama campaign machinery is its ju-jitsu-like ability to turn vulnerabilities into strengths, including even his (unjustified) reputation for straight-shooting. For example, blessed with more money than Ft. Knox, last week.

Obama said sayonara to his long-standing pledge to accept public funding for the general election. As best I can tell Obama is arguing that since he raised so much money over the Internet, this is the functional equivalent of accepting public funding. Talk about spin!

The candidate of "change" also turned down pro-life Sen. John McCain's invitation (in Washington Post columnist David Broder's words) to join McCain "in a series of town hall meetings where they would appear together and answer questions from real voters -- without a formal agenda, press panel or professional interviewers."

There is a reason Obama loves infomercials extolling himself and refuses unscripted moments like town hall meetings with McCain: the latter would reveal him to be the conventional liberal pro-abortion candidate who is decidedly ill at ease without a teleprompter.

A Washington Post/ ABC News poll released last week showed that "Americans have many questions about both men," Broder observed. In that poll, "only half of those interviewed said they felt they knew an adequate amount about the candidates' stands on specific issues."

Let's add to this the fact that 43% of the respondents described themselves as "moderate" and another 33% as "conservative"--a total of 76%--and ask ourselves whether Obama's vulnerability on the life issues can be turned into strengths.

Do you think that these conservative/moderate Americans (constituting over 3/4rds of the American electorate) would be comfortable if they knew Obama opposes parental involvement in the abortion decisions of minor girls? Strong majorities in every poll ever taken support parental involvement.

Or would they be favorably disposed if they knew that Obama co-sponsored a bill to allow human embryos to be cloned for research purposes--to be mass produced like widgets? Regardless of people's ill-informed opinions on "stem cell research," the public is clearly against treating cloned human embryos like commodities.

How good would they feel about the new/old Obama who criticized the Supreme Court in 2007 for upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act? Just explain to ordinary folks what abortionists do to hapless babies when they employ the partial-birth abortion technique and the revulsion meter registers off the scale.

Finally, regardless of how they may waffle on any of these previous items, what do you think most people would say if they knew Obama's attitude towards those few babies who miraculously survive an abortion?

Could they live with themselves voting for a man who as an Illinois state Senator was instrumental in assuring that a bill that merely extended to these babies the same medical attention given to a baby spontaneously born prematurely did not pass?

Obama wants a mulligan--a do-over--so that the few truths about his personality, his politics, and his personal associates that did make their way to the surface are buried in euphemisms and warm fuzzies.

Our job is two-fold. To make sure that everyone knows that Obama is the most anti-life presidential candidate to run since the lethal burden of Roe v. Wade was laid on the shoulders of unborn babies. And then when Obama attempts to cover up his core convictions on abortion and cloning by airing misleading ads in all 50 states, we act as the ultimate truth squad.