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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. |