Fresh Target for Wingnuts
18 February 2008 5:02 pm by Taylor Marsh
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No doubt John Edwards can sympathize with Clinton today. Obama’s ripoffs are real.
Just recently, Barack Obama was accused of “stealing”
Hillary Clinton’s economic plan.
“He basically took Clinton’s words and Clinton’s policies and called
them his own,” Hassett said. “If I were a professor I’d give him
an F and try to get him kicked out of school for something this terrible …
I remember Mrs. Clinton saying shared prosperity and I remember the bill that
she introduced in August for infrastructure. The fact is these are things
Obama has taken as his own without crediting the source of the ideas which
was Mrs. Clinton.”
Sun-Times:
Obama takes hit on economic policy – Campaign’s a ripoff of Clinton’s,
her supporters, McCain adviser maintains.
It’s hardly a first.
Edwards said Obama
was using stolen ideas:
Edwards’s campaign also blasted Obama for parroting the former senator
in a foreign policy speech he gave Tuesday in which he said he wanted to work
towards ending nuclear proliferation. They said the senator has followed Edwards
on a number of issues this campaign year, including healthcare, poverty and
now nuclear proliferation.“If you need any more proof that John Edwards is shaping the race for
the Democratic nomination, you don’t need to look any further than Senator
Obama, who has followed Edwards’s lead on healthcare, poverty and, today,
eliminating nuclear weapons,” Murray said in an e-mail to The Hill.
“Next thing you know, he’ll be rooting for the Tar Heels.”Obama copies line from Edwards 2003 announcement speech. “For months,
Obama has been telling crowds, ‘I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning
the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways
of Washington must change.’ Edwards gave a similar spin to his short political
resume when he announced his candidacy in September 2003, declaring, ‘I haven’t
spent most of my life in politics, but I’ve spent enough time in Washington
to know how much we need to change it.’”
In the Aug. issue of Progressive magazine Elizabeth Edwards goes
so far as to call Obama an outright copycat, accusing him of “lifting
her husband’s best lines.” E. Edwards: “You listen
to the language of what people say, particularly Obama, who seems to be using
a lot of John’s 2004 language, which is maybe not surprising since
one of his speechwriters was one of our speechwriters, his media guy was our
media guy. These people know John’s mantra as well as anybody could know it.
They’ve moved from ‘hope is on the way’ to ‘the audacity of hope.’ I’m constantly
hearing things in a familiar tone.”… … Edwards: “We are not the party of Washington insiders. We are
the party of the people, and so from this day forward we say no — no forever
to the money from Washington lobbyists.”The only difference — Obama beat him to it that day, towing the same anti-lobbyist
line at an earlier event that day in central Iowa. Obama: “We’ve got
to have a president in the White House who sets bold targets and sets broad
goals and isn’t intimidated by the barriers and the roadblocks and isn’t driven
by those who already have an investment in the status quo – somebody who can
overcome the lobby-driven, divisive politics that characterizes this issue.”Meanwhile, back at the labor forum, Obama used another token Edwardian statement:
“We need a president…who is not afraid to mention unions.”
Would
“borrow” make the Obama fans feel better?
Obama is selling himself more than any policy. “Only Barack Obama can
bring a fractured people together. . . . And he embodies the hope of our nation,”
a narrator says. But the Obama ad seems to borrow populist language
from Edwards, saying he will “take on the special interests”
and closing with Obama’s declaration that “we’re gonna take our country
back.”
It’s rich that Obama is actually circulating the horse manure that Clinton
is using his “Fired Up and Ready to Go.” The phrase goes
back to South
Carolina NAACP roots.
Nelson Rivers, field operations chief for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, said he first heard the late civil rights activist
and Charleston native Jondelle Harris Johnson use the call. And he used it
often during marches, rallies and banquets.
We’ll leave the Hopi, then Alice Walker line, “we are the change we seek” alone.
Obama likely thinks he conjured up that one too.
As for Obama claiming “SÃ Se Puede,” considering Dolores Huerta
is backing Clinton, let’s call it a wash.
Oh, and not that anyone is keeping
score but…
Quick, political junkies, here is a question: Who was the first Democratic
presidential candidate this year to invoke Martin Luther King’s famous quote
about the “fierce urgency of now” in connection with the campaign?Sen. Barack Obama, you say? Well, true, he got all the press for it and was
widely praised for it. In his Jefferson-Jackson Day speech in Iowa on Nov.
11, he said, “I am running in this race because of what Dr. King called
the ‘fierce urgency of now.’ Because I believe that there is such a thing
as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us.”So why didn’t Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton get the same kind of press
on Nov. 1, when she spoke at Wellesley College, about the importance
of young people in this election? She said, “I like to think it will
be young people, driven by Dr. King’s ‘fierce urgency of now,’ who will make
a difference in this election.”… .. Who knows why he got more press than Hillary? Maybe it’s because
the press wasn’t listening closely at Wellesley.
The press not listening? OH! Say it isn’t so.
