Barack Obama.
I have often quoted George Carlin's remarks which he made on the Charlie Rose show interview in late November 2004. Rose asked Carlin why he thought the Democrats lost the 2004 election. Carlin told of the advice his father gave him years earlier, paraphrasing, "When the other side has you talking their language, they've got you."
I will probably use this quote from now up until the November election because right now we are seeing Barack Obama holding only a slight lead in the major polls over John McCain. It is far from insurmountable by the likes of John McCain's powerful allies and smear mongers in the Republican Party. The 2008 election is probably just as important, maybe more so, to G. W. Bush as it is for John McCain.
It will be, as Bush pointed out in the aftermath of the 2004 election, "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates and chose me, for which I'm grateful."
G. W. Bush will interpret a John McCain win in November as a choice that the voters had between Barack Obama and Bush’s policies. If voters choose Bush’s policies that McCain wants to continue, it will be a huge victory for Bush.
Considering the breadth and scope of the Bush legacy of depravity, abandonment of Afghanistan, unending Iraq War with over 4,110 U.S. fatalities, budget deficits in each and every year of his administration, record national debt of $9.5 trillion, a weakening dollar, record balance of trade deficits, skyrocketing price of oil and gasoline, rising unemployment, scathing attacks against individual liberties and freedoms, Barack Obama should be 20 to 30 points ahead of John McCain. However, he is not and as a matter of fact, John McCain is gaining traction while the infamous Republican smear machine is just getting wound up.
Barack Obama claimed recently that once he meets with U.S. military commanders in his upcoming visit to Iraq he will "refine" his strategy for withdrawing troops and ending the Iraq War over time. He is accused by the McCain operatives of changing tactics and coming around more to John McCain's position. The mainstream media obediently disseminated the Republican propaganda that Barack Obama has shifted his position on ending the Iraq debacle and has now become a centrist.
When General Wesley Clark made the statement that he didn't think being shot down over enemy territory and spending 5-1/2 years as a POW were qualifications to become president, McCain's propagandists exploded and screeched on Fox News that Clark dissed McCain's war record and military service.
Why do they get away with these incendiary, dishonest remarks? In two words: Stupidity and Gullibility. Republicans rely on the public's gullibility and how easily they can be deceived. Exacerbating Obama’s problems are the timorous mainstream media who regurgitate the Republican propaganda as if it were Gospel.
As long as Barack Obama is put on the defensive over inane charges by the likes of Franklin Graham and James Dobson who insist on spouting the lie that Obama is a Muslim, he will suffer John Kerry's fate -- close but no cigar.
I am not angry with the Religious Right so much as I am at Obama for naively thinking he can talk to people as myopic, hateful and depraved as Dobson and other Evangelicals who have become a political arm of the Republican Party. They are one of the biggest reasons why our country is in decline on the world stage. I am angry with Obama for making the same mistake that Democrats continue to make. They don't understand the simple and stark truth that the late George Carlin articulated so well -- when the other side has you talking their language they've got you.
Barack Obama, by drifting away from his message of hope and inspiration that got him to the Big Dance to begin with, will go home alone in November because he mistakenly thought that the extremist factions of the Republican Party and its Evangelical base cared about ending the devastation to our country caused by G. W. Bush and the toxic tone that allowed these autocrats to define all the talking points.
Barack Obama, if he wants to win in November, can't go to war with a peashooter. For every hit he takes from the Republican propagandists he needs to fire back forcefully with bigger and louder guns.
Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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