Mr. Obama, Welcome to the NFL
Barack Obama just had the worst week since his beloved pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to expatiate on black liberation theology at the National Press Club.
Coming off his royal progress through the Near and Middle East, Berlin, Paris and London, Barack had surged to a nine-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. By Friday, he was back to a dead heat with a 72-year-old opponent with none of his natural skills, in a year when grocers are pulling Republican brands off the shelves.
For all its gracelessness, the McCain campaign, given openings by Barack, stepped in and put Muhammad Ali on the canvas.
The first opening was the clumsiness with which Barack dealt with a planned visit to wounded U.S. troops in Landshul, Germany.
While the first half of his foreign trip, to Afghanistan and Iraq, was official, the European tour was campaign related. Yet, it was on this leg that a visit to wounded U.S. soldiers had been scheduled. As campaigning in a military hospital is prohibited, the visit was canceled.
But, instead of going ahead and visiting the troops alone, without aides, press or cameras, Barack bailed out and flew on to Paris.
This left the McCain folks an opening to paint Obama as a cold-hearted opportunist avid to visit a military hospital only if he could bring in press and cameras to record his compassion.
Enraged Obama aides savagely accused McCain of running a dishonorable campaign. This reflex reaction, and the ugly brawl that ensued, made some Americans think less of Obama, but many more forget what a success his foreign trip had been.
Came then the Paris-Britney ad. This opens with shots of the wayward blondes, then of Barack, presuming to equate the three as vacuous, insubstantial and aimless. Purpose: Disparage Barack’s rock-star popularity and turn it into something laughable.
While the ad seemed both defensive and non-credible, too much of a stretch to be believed--even Republicans derided it as “childish"--it apparently acted as something of a matador’s cape snapped in front of an already tormented Obama.
Stung, Barack retorted: “What they’re going to try is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills you know. He’s risky.”
Barack was accusing the McCain campaign of implying he is risky because he is black.
This was the opening Rick Davis of McCain’s campaign needed to deliver a vicious uppercut to Obama’s jaw, charging him with “playing the race card ... from the bottom of the deck.” Added Davis, this was “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.” McCain, sadly, agreed.
With that, both benches cleared.
Saturday, Bob Herbert of the New York Times charged McCain and the Republican Party with producing ads that are “slimy ... foul, poisonous ... designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.”
Sunday, Gene Robinson of the Washington Post accused McCain of “running a desperate, ugly campaign.”
The Britney-Paris ad calling Obama “the biggest celebrity in the world” was an attempt to “turn Obama’s popularity into a flaw.”
Now, undeniably, McCain’s ad was designed to minimize and mock Obama’s popularity as a modern form of Beatlemania.
But what is wrong with that?
On the weekend, the McCain folks released another ad. Called ”The One,” it features Barack’s grandiose pronouncements about who he is, what he means to mankind and the marvelous miracles that await our messiah’s arrival--and twins him with Moses (Charlton Heston) parting the Red Sea in “The Ten Commandments.”
The effectiveness of the ad is that people laugh with it, and so doing, laugh at the perceived pretentiousness of Barack Obama.
In a week, Barack, an object of media homage on his trip abroad, has become an object of mockery in much of Middle America. Though his media allies may howl racism, most Americans tend more and more to dismiss this. That card has been played so often it’s dog-eared.
And Barack’s raising the race issue anew seems suicidal. When one is winning the black vote 94 to 1, does it make sense to keep pushing into the face of the 87 percent of Americans who are Asian, Hispanic and Caucasian that the next president will definitely not be one of you?
When JFK’s polls showed him sweeping 80 percent of Catholics, he did not whistle-stop through the Bible Belt, billing himself as our “first Roman Catholic president.” He sent Lyndon and Lady Bird on a Dixie special to talk about JFK’s war record and rake Richard Nixon.
Thus did he become our first Catholic president. If Barack wishes to be our first black president, he will tell his friends to stop bellowing and braying every day about it.
Comments
Gallup reports that the 3 percentage-point lead Obama holds over McCain matches the average he’s held since he clinched the Democratic Party nomination in early June.
Nothings really changed…
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I think McCain will win the ad war but he won’t win the debate war, Obama will leave him in the dust there.
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I really, really wish Pat would stop pimping for the GOP.
Both candidates are throughly disgusting in their own unique ways.
A pox on both of them and their parties.
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“By Friday, he was back to a dead heat with a 72-year-old opponent ....”
electoral-vote.com shows Obama beating McCain, 289 to 236, it takes 270 to win.
Florida changed from Obama to McCain this week. Doesn’t look like a dead heat.
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Bill, are you serious?
Mr. Obama, what is your economic plan.
“Ughhhhhh......Ughhhh......Change......Ughhhhhhhh.”
Obama cannot debate. He needs his prompters.
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Yeah welcome to the NFL as a waterboy for the powers that be especially via their media
machine. See-?-if I was running for el’Presidente I would ONLY have gone to see the
wounded without any press or cameras. First I’d have RAGE while doing that, and then
tears, and wouldn’t want to scare my fellow americans. There’s no jekel’s island for the
guilty you see if i’m el’presidente. don’t get your shorts in a knot, i never will be. If
I were better then maybe i’d let me run for it. why not? it’s just the world.
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Who is Buchanan kidding? McCain and crew will no more successfully deal with the race issue than Clinton did. They’d better hope the internet will do it for them and then, if they win the race, they can go back to denouncing the people who vote for them as hicks and evil racists and continue implementing the Final Solution to the white problem with open borders. The modern conservatives and the Republicans are down with the Holocaust, they just contend that they can run it better and with more profits to big business.
No white person should vote for a nonwhite when there is a reasonable choice, to do so is to reward the genocidal racism of the system. This is the standard nonwhites already follow, to (surprise!) no one’s consternation or condemnation. In Obama’s case you have a politician who has been spent his entire life soaking in white-hating racism, who is an avowed leftist where leftism means little more than white-hating racism (the only real “change” Obama’s posse is touting is racial). It is a sign of the depth of institutional white-hate racism and the degree of how much that hate has been internalized by its victims that this character is still even in the running. Remember the macaca incident?
Obama is suffering from Black Celebrity Derangement Syndrome (sometimes called Danny Glover’s Disease). This is the disease where black actors are so often cast as brilliant astrophysicists and brain surgeons who solve crimes on the side that they start believing it to be true. Where fawning liberals refuse to criticize their behavior (up to and including rape and murder). Blacks are only carriers of this lethal disease, its real target is whites.
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I’m with Jim. Pat not overtly supporting McCain is great, but the anti-Obama series is getting dull.
On the race issue, yes most black voters are for Obama because he is black (women-Hillary, protestants-protestant, etc.). Big deal. And Caucasians must be drifting toward McCain for some mysterious reason (race?). Otherwise, how on earth can this individual with near zero people-skills and with nothing but war propaganda be anywhere above 10 points?
The neo-con camp are running a great Clintonian-swift-boat campaign of cheapshots and hatred against Obama. All it does is diminish the level of politics in this country- if that were possible. The media of course is eating it up. They just love “he said-she said” campaigning. It makes me sick. Anytime I here McCain start “Yesterday, Senator Obama said that...” I switch channels. Is this what political discourse is about now? When did politics get so pathetic?
That lack of saviness (or visciousness) on the Obama camp might be a good sign that there are some decent folk on there, I don’t know. I just hope that eventually there will be a backlash against the evil campaign ran by the evil neo-con party. Conservatives, rich guys, white guys, Christians, et al. need to realize that the Republican party is not the good or moral one anymore. It’s Satan’s party.
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The troubling aspect of Pat’s column is that there are seem to be no real issues that will dominate the coming election. It has come down to Brittney and “whose skin color is more appealing”, after both candidates have decided to hand the war issue over to AIPAC, the illegal immigration issue to La Raza, and the defense of the constitution to the CIA.
Why not hire Simon and hand over the election to Fox and make it into a contest with the title “So you think you can occupy the White House”. I am sure the American electorate would go along with that .
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Next week, Obama’s lead will be back up to nine or ten points, then some other jackass stunt will momentarily allow McCain illusory viability, then nine points ahead again - and so forth - see-sawing until Election Night when Obama will win by 13-17 percent nationally. It will be 1980 all over again: The networks will call the winner before retiree volunteers in West Coast polling places polish off their Mrs. Fields Brownie Baskets.
The Republicans are battered and stupified - prepared to do anything but debate the real issues. After eight years of George W. Bush, the party has all the heft of an Arizona land fraud operation, and all the inspirational spark of a masturbating zoo chimp.
The GOP deserves its sorry fate. Humilty is galvanizing, and the party will be tin scrap this fall.
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At this juncture, I believe that it is in everybody’s best interest that we simply turn the Presidency into a Reality Television Show entitled:
“Pimp My White House”
wherein a passel of dysfunctional politicos live in the White House and conduct a kind of combination Cage Fight- Bitch Slap debate over re-decorating the place and at the end, a panel of Cocktail Swells from Park Avenue, Buckhurst, Pacific Palisades and Malibu will vote for who will be the next President.
All advertising revenue shall forthwith go toward sending Congress on a permanent junket to Ouagadougou in scenic Burkina Faso where they will be inducted into a new Assholes Hall of Fame financed by the World Bank . While they’re gone, might I suggest revoking their passports.
Washington should then be left to the purview of a passel of stray dogs and those crazy enough to live in such a squalid climate whilst the States shall pocket the former Federal revenue which shall be reduced by 80%
Pimp My White House....a Reality Show whose time has finally come.
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the Hegelian Left or the Hegelian Right...you guys are so funny.
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San Fernando Curt is right Obama will win by 10 to 20 points. If Bush could barely win and he lost the popular vote in 2000. How can an old fool with no solutions but more of the same win? The republican campaign will be answered by more of the same by the democrats. It will make us all vomit but the democrats are much more commited to win.
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the Lumbering Galleons of the ante-chambers of Power; certainly not lumbering Gallileans; wish to be nobility. However, none wish to be Noble. Methinks, they no longer know how. American Ceremonialism, packed forth with impregnated Marranoes & Moriscos continues to project desecration and debasement; dispossession and disarmament. None heralding disabusement. They are their[s] & our[s] sad letters of marque. No spiritual horizens rising anywhere. All colourless, confused, conflated congeries.
We all must remember: William of Nassau & Richelieu were Catholics.
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Chris Lyttle, perhaps you are right, I’m already thinking I was wrong about McCain winning the ad war. The McCain attack ad with Britney and Paris may be backfiring bigtime:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2056976/posts
“Mr. Obama, what is your economic plan.
“Ughhhhhh......Ughhhh......Change (not change but, well, duh I ‘ll have to get back to you on that, I have advisors and know nothing about economics)......Ughhhhhhhh.” That’s actually McCain’s line, you’d know that if you had watched the debates
Seems the Hilton family is sorta upset and Paris/Britney have the right to sue McCain in several states.
But, seriously, Obama is said to be a pretty decent orator, I still think he’ll clean McCain’s clock (is it even still running?) in the debates. FTR, I’m a Ron Paulian, can’t stand either McCain or Obama.
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Buchanan was right on the Iraq war. Does he really want to drag his credibility through the
mud by defending snakes like McCain? Is Bush support next? Hey Buchanan are you now going
to claim the Iraq war was the right thing to do after all because the surge is working?
Pat has gone from a bold truth-teller to a kiss-up neocon shill.
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Obama true democrat is allowed to do pretty much as he likes. If he likes he may obey the laws, if he would rather break them he is free to do it. He is under no legal of moral obligation to serve the public but may please himself about it. He may conceivably get into trouble with the law and be sentenced to death or banishment but as it is no one’s business in so free and independent a community to enforce the laws he can still walk the streets as safe as though he were a spirit invisible to the offices of justice.
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No comment really, just wondering if i can make your already unreadably tiny column into something even tinier.
You know, most people nowadays read the computer with something larger than an 8 inch screen.
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Jim, I don’t think Buchanan has become a “neocon shill.” A lot of what he does is straight political analysis, at which he’s one of the best. Unfortunately, given the two major candidates, he naturally hasn’t got much to say which can really please us, or advance traditionalist/paleocon principles. Nevertheless, I find his columns perceptive and interesting enough to enjoy, in this most unenjoyable political campaign.
And the neocons, of course, hate Buchanan far worse than they do Obama, any other liberal or any “Islamo-Nazi.”
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I mistakenly cited Jim when I meant Bob D. Sorry ‘bout that. And Woerner Hoermann, you sum up our dumbed down political culture accurately and amusingly.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skElJ8LF-Sc
^ all I have to say is mcain’s campaign was on the brink of disolution FOR A REASON. namely MCAIN HIMSELF.
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Mr. Hoermann sed: “The troubling aspect of Pat’s column is that there are seem to be no real issues that will dominate the coming election. It has come down to Brittney and “whose skin color is more appealing”, after both candidates have decided to hand the war issue over to AIPAC, the illegal immigration issue to La Raza, and the defense of the constitution to the CIA.”
I agree, with Hoermann. There is not a lot I can see to really “debate” between Obama and McCain,
so we have all this bluster and blow instead.
If any issue is alive, it’s whether to ratify Bush2 by electing McCain. That’s what Obama
will run on..."change". So if you want to register a vote against the Bush2 legacy, vote for
the other guy. And with Wall Street on government bailout, the economy lost it’s productive
capacity---and wages stagnant, and home equity falling--so nobody can mortgage their real
property to bail themselves and the economy out...and of course, the quaqmire in the mideast, then
how much worse could Obama be?
The choice is the CEO classes against everyone else. So the Republicans keep pimping the
same old playbook: leveraging white working class resentment to affirmative action and racial
preferences, against their oligarchical economic program.
I’ve got news for Pat and the rest of you...this ‘strategy’---if you could call it that--is
really tired, and more and more of it yields decreasing marginal returns.
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Beau Martin,
I hope you are right about Pat. Certainly the old Pat Buchanan was a literate and unique
paleocon leader and a dirge to the neocons. But Hannity and Rush love Pat now and hate
Obama so you are wrong about that… But maybe I’m imagining the change in him. He wants
to be accepted by all conservatives and earn a good living, he might not want to end up
like Ron Paul or Bob Novak by sacrificing money and MSM popularity for principle.
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