Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Step Away from the Blather updated

In case you’re bored with the
usual rumors and far removed sourcing of people like Anne Kornblut, though she does have a quote from James Carville, but who
today put out this beauty: The chief concern, one person with immediate
knowledge of the campaign said, was that Clinton simply did not visit Iowa enough
over the summer and early fall … .. “One person with immediate knowledge
of the campaign.” Wow, well let me drop everything and take this to heart,
Ms. Kornblut. (To add… Democratic Strategist has some important thoughts on this as well.) We’ve been talking about Iowa for weeks on my radio show, so it’s amazing Kornblut
still can’t figure out the dynamics, even with such highly touted, um, sources. I’ve offered the ad above because it illustrates what Kornblut missed. Oh! And then there’s Robert
Novak’s long awaited proof that the Clinton camp was pushing dirt. It’s hard to believe that Mr.
Obama would go off using this right-wing coward as your source. But he did. So instead
of wasting your time on this stuff, I’ve got two interesting reads that will
actually be worth your time.

Eriposte over at
The Left Coaster has done a remarkable post on who he’s endorsing for the
primaries. Nobody really believes endorsements matter. Just look at Oprah’s
numbers versus Bill Clinton’s power. But the thing about Eriposte’s article
is that it goes into more detail than you will find anywhere, dissecting Clinton
and Obama in one post to prove his case. Check
it out.

On the foreign policy front, SusanUnPC
from Larry Johnson’s No Quarter takes Obama out on foreign policy: Obama
Talks the Talk, But Where’s the Walk?

A do-nothing? You can’t even find it listed at his Senate Web site, but Sen. Obama is the chairman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs for the Senate Foreign Relations committee. That subcommittee oversees “U.S. involvement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), relations with the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Matters relating to Greenland and the northern polar region are also the responsibility of this subcommittee.” Shockingly — although his campaign has tried to beef up his thin international experience by citing his chairmanship of the subcommittee on European affairs — according to Congressional Quarterly, Sen. Obama has not held a single hearing since he assumed the chairmanship nearly a year ago. It’s little wonder, then, that Sen. Obama’s Senate site doesn’t list his chairmanship.

This is the very first time anyone has brought this to the forefront. It hasn’t
been covered in the press once and I must say I missed it in Congressional
Quarterly. To me it’s another example of Obama skipping out on Kyl-Lieberman,
as well as not doing anything lately on Iraq. It
wasn’t Obama who recently sent letters to Bush on our new “enduring
friendship” with Maliki, and challenged the president on what he’s doing
to bypass the Senate through offering
new legislation. SusanUnPC:

Then there’s IRAQ, and Obama’s (and Oprah’s) incessant claim– as Oprah told the Des Moines crowd on Saturday, “long before it was the popular thing to do, he stood with clarity and conviction against this war in Iraq.” In July of `04, Barack Obama, “I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know,” in terms of how you would have voted on the war. And then this: “There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.” That was July of `04. And this: “I think” there’s “some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war.” It doesn’t seem that you are firmly wedded against the war, and that you left some wiggle room that, if you had been in the Senate, you may have voted for it. (”Meet the Press,” 2004, via MyDD, Nov. 11, 2007) “What would I have done? I don’t know” … “There’s not much of a difference” between him and George W. Bush … “some room for disagreement in that initial decision. …” If that’s not triangulation, I don’t know what is. What about Obama’s speeches on Iraq in the U.S. Senate? “[H]e did not give a speech devoted to Iraq for 11 months, and waited 16 months to give his first floor speech dedicated to Iraq, which happened to express his opposition to Senator John Kerry’s troop withdrawal plan. …”

This is another good point. Where was Mr. Obama when Kerry and Feingold were
trying to pass a withdrawal plan? Obama
basically sabotaged Kerry’s efforts on the Senate floor, even using Lieberman
type language to do it.

… .. For all these reasons, I would like nothing more than to support the Kerry Amendment; to bring our brave troops home on a date certain, and spare the American people more pain, suffering and sorrow. But having visited Iraq, I’m also acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by Congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this Administration. It could compound them. It could compound them by plunging Iraq into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis. We must exit Iraq, but not in a way that leaves behind a security vacuum filled with terrorism, chaos, ethnic cleansing and genocide that could engulf large swaths of the Middle East and endanger America. We have both moral and national security reasons to manage our exit in a responsible way. I share many of the goals set forth in the Kerry Amendment. We should send a clear message to the Iraqis that we won’t be there forever, and that by next year our primary role should be to conduct counter-insurgency actions, train Iraqi security forces, and provide needed logistical support.

Clinton has taken hit after hit for her original Iraq vote from Obama. In fact,
Clinton has been a punching bag on Iraq for many of her opponents. I was against
the war from the beginning. I also have worked tirelessly in print and on my
show to rail against the war, never once using words like Mr. Obama, which reveals
his disingenuousness on attacking Clinton on Iraq now when he opposed measures
that could have helped changed the dynamic. Clinton has come to her redeployment
passion late, that’s for sure, but as Obama touts his anti Iraq war bona fides
there is just too much evidence to prove his lackluster leadership on Iraq throughout
his time in the Senate. He and Clinton have the
exact same votes. Yet Mr. Obama continues to act as if he’s been the leader
on getting us out of the war. His Senate actions do not back up his campaign rhetoric.