Critical moment
As both the war with Iran rhetoric and the Rev. Wright smear campaign heat up, you have to wonder whether we have ourselves another "fall guy" Dem in the mold of John Kerry, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
UPDATE
ABC News:
Gingrich described Wright as "hard-line anti-American," and said "if Rev. Wright continues to talk that the burden that Sen. Obama carries becomes bigger and bigger. "
Associated Press:
Democrat Barack Obama says he was outraged by the comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and saddened by the spectacle of his appearance on Monday.
--
Classic fall guy move -- imitate rightwingers in transparent bow to their agenda. Weak, fearful me-tooism. He was for Rev. Wright before he was against him.
As both the war with Iran rhetoric and the Rev. Wright smear campaign heat up, you have to wonder whether we have ourselves another "fall guy" Dem in the mold of John Kerry, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
He [Obama] could skewer Hillary the hawk with one well-placed arrow, aimed straight at her vulnerability on the Iran issue. With the first shots of a new war already fired, apparently, and rumors of an imminent American strike at Iran flying thick and fast, Obama could denounce her as a warmonger, a McCain in drag, whose short-term political opportunism is helping to embroil us in a quagmire far worse than the one in Iraq, where she played a similar role in 2003. Yet I hear nothing like this coming from Obama's camp. Maureen Dowd nails it, with her typically acerbic take:
"Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the politics of scoring points, but to win, you've got to score points."
The American people oppose war with Iran, perhaps more than they want out of Iraq: the economic consequences alone will infuriate them far more than any other foreign policy decision of this administration. What the War Party is hoping is that their fury will be directed overseas, at our alleged "enemies" in Tehran, and not at home, in the direction of Washington, where proper blame belongs.
Americans await the advent of a real leader, the sort who could and would focus that anger on the right target. Whether Obama has the gumption – and the strategic sense – to make this fight about policy, not personalities, race, and gender, remains to be seen. He's promised us a new politics, but that doesn't have to mean blandness and an inability to fight. It can and must mean sharp attacks on wrong ideas – and one looks in vain for an idea as wrongheaded as war with Iran.
-- Is War With Iran Imminent?, by Justin Raimondo
UPDATE
ABC News:
Gingrich described Wright as "hard-line anti-American," and said "if Rev. Wright continues to talk that the burden that Sen. Obama carries becomes bigger and bigger. "
Associated Press:
Democrat Barack Obama says he was outraged by the comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and saddened by the spectacle of his appearance on Monday.
--
Classic fall guy move -- imitate rightwingers in transparent bow to their agenda. Weak, fearful me-tooism. He was for Rev. Wright before he was against him.
