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View Full Version : Republicans Are Angry, But Not Necessarily At Obama



Kathianne
10-12-2008, 08:09 AM
Indeed they don't like his ideas, but who would expect them to? Sure they are angry about ACORN and the left's glee at the thought of 'stealing an election', but hey, McCain seems bound & determined to make that a moot point:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10122008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/wrong_for_the_right_133269.htm?page=0


WRONG FOR THE RIGHT

By DAVID FREDDOSO

October 12, 2008 --

John McCain blew it. Barack Obama will win the election, and there may be nothing that McCain can do to stop it.

This isn't just what liberals are saying. It's what conservatives are thinking, and they're angry. Annoyed that this is exactly what they thought would happen when he squeaked out a win in the primaries. Frustrated that they kept their criticism of his campaign to a minimum for the sake of the party. Livid at what they consider McCain's sluggish efforts....

...To the degree that they are engaged in this election, conservatives are motivated entirely by fear of Obama and what he will do as president when backed by a solidly liberal Democratic House and Senate. They are not driven by love of the Republican candidate, and it shows in the anger present at McCain campaign rallies. Most conservatives will probably vote for McCain, but they also realize they are far less likely to persuade others, and they feel a disaster coming. The enthusiasm the Right felt during the 2004 election, which had been framed as a true ideological clash between Left and Right, simply does not exist this time around....

... With his instinctual moderation preventing a more ideological race, McCain's best weapon is Obama's record. Obama certainly makes for an easy target, but will this be enough to turn around a losing effort in the campaign's final month?

If he is to have any chance at this point, McCain must at least make his attacks on Obama more meaningful and relevant for voters. For example, Obama's collaborations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and with convicted felon Tony Rezko both offer proof that he lacks the judgment to handle the economic crisis or the other challenges that presidents face. His shifting explanations of both relationships also evince a lack of integrity. But McCain must also point to Obama's failures of leadership in connection with these associations, for this is far more important than the associations themselves.

As chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational reform project that Ayers founded, Obama presided over a waste of $160 million in donors' money. The project, under his leadership, failed to improve student achievement in the 210 Chicago schools where it operated, according to the Annenberg Challenge's final report. And to this day, that project is Obama's only significant executive experience.

Obama's legislative leadership was similar, a case study in wasting other people's money. In Springfield, Obama wrote letters from his public position to get Rezko $14 million for his slum-development enterprise. Obama co-sponsored several pieces of housing legislation favorable to Rezko and other slum-developers, giving them hundreds of millions in subsidies and other tax and regulatory advantages. They in turn funneled money to Obama's campaigns and then let their buildings deteriorate, even turning off the heat on their tenants during the winter. By his own account, Obama never bothered to follow up on how the money was spent, but the record shows that he worked in every legislative session to provide more for his developer friends.

McCain's campaign should also pick up on another story that casts doubt upon Obama's leadership and integrity, carried in late April by the Los Angeles Times on how state Senator Obama and his aide, Dan Shomon, helped steer taxpayers' money to one of Obama's private law clients. The client, Robert Blackwell, had just paid Obama $112,000 in his capacity as a private attorney for one of his corporations. State Senator Obama and Shomon then helped Blackwell obtain $320,000 in state tourism grants to hold ping-pong tournaments. As he writes in "The Audacity of Hope," this work came at a time when Obama was short of cash, and the Times reported that work for Obama at the firm had also been thin. In his state Senate financial-disclosure forms, Obama buried this obvious conflict of interest amid a long list of his firm's clients. From simply looking at Obama's disclosures, one could never guess that Blackwell's company had paid him a majority of his income for 2001.

Could any Republican have risen to the task this year of winning a presidential election? We will never know the answer to that question. But John McCain has less than a month now to prove that he was not the wrong man to beat Barack Obama. As much as conservatives hope he can prove otherwise, they are watching this election now with dread.