Obama’s Bernie Kerik
23 January 2008 11:27 am by Taylor Marsh
Ho-boy. Obama needs a bulldozer. He’s just making the hole deeper.
“Nobody had any indications that he was engaging in wrongdoing,” Obama said on CBS.
As I pointed out in the lengthy investigative piece I just posted, this is a story about judgment and character. It’s patently false for Obama to say “nobody had any indications” blah-blah-blah. On the land purchase alone, this happened when everyone knew of Rezko’s problems, going back to 2006:
The transaction occurred at a time when it was widely known Tony Rezko was under investigation by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and as other Illinois politicians befriended by Rezko distanced themselves from him.
Antoin “Tony” Rezko is Barack Obama’s Bernie Kerik.
Rezko also brings into question the primary focus of Obama’s campaign, because in the end he really is just another politician scrapping, pandering and pontificating to get more power. Rising above “politics as usual” is nothing but a slogan, as Obama’s record reveals. He’s conducted his entire political life like any other power hungry pol. Again, read about Alice Palmer and the dumping of Ryan’s divorce papers into the press, which happened miraculously and ended up giving Obama an easy pass into the Senate. To add, that’s not to say that Obama had anything personally to do with this, though the scuttlebutt circulating around the people to whom I’ve spoken, which I’ve specified before, is that someone near and dear did. Take it for what it’s worth, because as I reported before, no one will go on the record. Obama is old style Chicago politics to the core. Off the record interviews with people who have known Obama since he first started coming up in Chicago politics proves it:
“When he went after Bobby Rush he lost a lot of Democratic support. And he had to kiss and make up before his bid for U.S. Senate.” – Chicago source with special knowledge of Obama’s political rise to power
Then there’s what is now being called Obama’s “Groucho Marx moment.” An interview with Obama on “Today” that talks about this video ad from Clinton. Notice that during the interview Obama pretends not to be able to hear the clip, then trudges through to give his point, even though the viewers clearly saw his flip flopping. Classic Obama.
Barack Obama’s Groucho Marx Moment
There are times in campaigns when candidates say or do things that destroy the major premises of their campaigns in an instant. Barack Obama did that this morning in his interview with Meredith Vieira on the Today Show.
When confronted with a clip (starting at about 5 minutes into the interview) of him saying in Monday night’s debate that he never supported a single-payer health care system and then a clip of him saying he was a proponent of a single-payer system, Obama uncomfortably dodged his very obvious contradiction by telling Vieira that he could not hear the clips.
By relying on the Groucho Marx defense (”Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”), Obama reduced himself to a typical politician in front of millions of voters.
Vieira reported that the clips were prepared by the Clinton campaign, which was all the more reason for Obama to have been prepared to respond to the clips.
Voters react to demonstrated behavior. If a politician says he or she represents a new style of politics, but his or her behavior clearly demonstrates the opposite, voters will base their judgments on the behavior and not on what the politician tells them.
Lots to talk about.
Hope you can join me.
