Obama Unmasked & Gamed [Update]
by linfar, Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 09:33:26 AM EST
Robert Creamer, who pleaded guilty of bank fraud and failure to pay federal taxes in Aug, 2005, and who spent the second half of 2006 living at the Federal Corectional Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, taught at "Camp Obama" in 2007. His job: to instruct interns and volunteers in political organizing--the very abuses of which sent him to jail.
What did Creamer teach at Obama's week long politial training camp? INSPIRATION!! And he lectured that there are only two groups of voters who decide the outcomes of elections. So these are the targets of communiation that can be affected by political campaigns. They are "persuadables" and "mobilizables."
According to Creamer in an article which appeared yesterday in the Huffington Post, "persuadables" are voters who are switch hitters, they will vote either party, but they always vote. The deal is that they have to be persuaded to vote for your candidate. "Mobilizables" don't have to be persuaded. But they often don't vote. They have to be "inspired" to vote.
He then gives examples of Obama's message which targets these groups:
That we're all in this together
You're not all in this alone
Unity not division
Hope not fear
Creamer has little respect for issues. Forget 10 point plans. Stick with inspiration.
Unfortunately, while the carefully nurtured political gambit of Inspiration with a capital I has surely succeeded; and it does match for cynicism anything out of the Karl Rove playbook, the Republicans have gamed the effort.
Rove was another step ahead of Obama.
Forty percent of the Obama voters in Iowa were Republicans. Obama will tell you his "inspiration" message is working. Republican operatives tell a different story.There is a very successful GOP strategy to take out Hillary in the democratic primaries that is capitalizing on the Obama strategy.
Former Senator Lincoln Chafee, the most famous vote for John Bolton to become Ambassador to the United Nations and who was defeated for re-election in the 2006 mid-term elections in Rhode Island by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, publicly endorsed Obama last week. The Rhode Island primary is March 4. Chafee joins a long list of Republicans who have either endorsed the junior senator outright or praised him mightily. Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the New American Century, a group which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has praised Obama fulsomely.
But more importantly there is a nationwide roster of Republican party activists who have backed Obama and then brought their constituents along with them to vote Independent or cross party lines to vote for Obama. This is a fact of this primary season.
The pattern is so widespread that one has to wonder what is going on?
Obama, via his now obvious campaign strategy outlined above, would have us believe that his cross party appeal is bringing in tons of new voters. Men and women, he asserts, who are abandoning their party to vote for him. And some Democratic Party officials and activists are supporting Obama based on this assertion. Who doesn't want a candidate who can bring in masses of new voters? Nancy Pelosi it has been rumored, impressed by this vote-getting ability, is considering endorsing Obama.
But what if Obama is not actually bringing in tons of new voters? What if Republicans have organized to cross party lines or vote independent with one goal in mind: to defeat Senator Clinton. And what if this strategy was developed by top level Republican party functionaries-- including Karl Rove-- who believe Clinton will be the more formidable opponent in the general election?
Anecdotal evidence in support of a Republican manipulation is everywhere. Remember the recent Obama win in Maryland? Nicole Price, the Maryland political director of Obama's campaign told the Washington Times that when she arrived in the state to ramp up the campaign. She found "a home-grown campaign already thriving." Republicans backing Obama had put more yard signs in Maryland than in South Carolina and they had paid for the signs "themselves." The Times also noted that in Louisiana, where he won by a wide margin, exit polls showed that Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary favored Mr. Obama 3-1 over Clinton. About 5 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary said they were Republicans.
According to the Washington Times story, Daniel B., Chance, a retired oil man, voted for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Maryland Republican primary in the morning. He then spent the afternoon making calls from the phone bank at the Obama campaign's Baltimore County Headquarters in Towson.
The critical point here is this: what is a loyal Huckabee supporter doing making calls for Obama?
Moreover, the Huckabee supporter joined a large mix of either Republicans like himself or Democrat for-a-day Republican converts who were also making calls on behalf of Obama.
Besides this anecdotal evidence, are there any hard facts which support a widespread Republican manipulation of the Democratic primaries? Time magazine reports,
"Rank and file Republicans in red states have switched their party registrations to vote in Democratic primaries."In Nebraska, the mayor of Omaha publicly rallied Republicans to caucus for Obama on February 9th. And according to CNN in Iowa 44 percent of those voting for Obama were Republican.
Joe Conason in Salon in late December wrote,
"In the weeks since Karl Rove offered his unsolicited advice on how to defeat Hillary Clinton in the pages of the Financial Times, right wing expressions of support for Obama have become increasingly conspicuous and voluble."These include opinion makers like the Weekly Standard, William Kristol who endorsed Obama in a NY Times editorial and George Will. Three major fundraisers for the President have now given money to Obama. The Weekly Standard ran a cover story in early December that according to Conason "literally swooned" over Obama. This story was written by Stephen Hays, Dick Cheney's admiring biographer and according to Conason "the last journalist on earth who still believes that Saddam Hussein was allied with al_Qaida."
The broadcast media apparently not immune itself to the "inspiration message manipulation" of voter emotion has also displayed an fawning adulation of Obama. For example one only need consider Chris Mathews saying he got a thrill in his leg over Obama. And this must be contrasted with a deplorable bias and outright prejudice against Clinton. Karl Rove citing polling data declared,
"There is no candidate on record, a front-runner for a party's nomination, who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has."And like little sprouts off the main tree all the broadcast networks began hammering home the idea that "the voters don't like her." Over and over and over again adjectives such as "unlikeable,""divisive," and "polarizing," have been repeated about Clinton in an avalanche of negative press. This repetion cannot help but remind one of the way "weapons of mass destruction" were repeated ad nauseum in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. And very much like that media orchestrated campaign or the one that buried Al Gore, both of which were based on so much false and perjured evidence, nowhere is it understood, let alone reported, that Rove based that original assessment on interviews with conservative voters.
There are here and there in the public square a few who are questioning what appears to be a mindless adoration of Obama's message of hope. And often times this is based on what appear to be amazing contradictions in his stated positions on those apparently "non-inspriing" issues.
Here are a some of these questions:
How do you believe in someone who says he'll agree to public campaign financing and now is taking it back?
How do you believe in someone who claimed not to have PACs and now is found to have donated more than 4 times what Clinton did to Super Delegates?
How do you believe in someone who says he's for gun control in one state and against it in another state?
How do you believe in someone who claims not to be playing the race card and then gets caught circulating a memo detailing how to do just that?
How do you believe in someone who sends Jesse Jackson Jr. to intimidate black candidates who support Clinton?
The blogger who wrote this cracked me up and I close with it now because it is just so perfect:
There is a sucker born every minute, I hear.Links: http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/why-inspiration-will-make_b_86844.html http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1680192,00.html http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080212/NATION/108597255/0 http://www.salon.com/opinion/consason/2007/12/21/right_and_obama/print.html
I just didn't realize they'd all join up at once and chant, "Yes We Can!"
Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove, Lincoln Chafee, Maryland, Republicans, Robert Creamer (all tags)
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