http://rawstory.com/news/2008/GOP_ad_maker...ntial_0319.html


GOP ad makers salivate at potential in Wright comments
Nick Juliano
Published: Wednesday March 19, 2008



Have Republicans found their golden ticket to the White House this year?

The same GOP ad-men who turned John Kerry's Vietnam service into a political liability and tied decorated veteran Max Cleland (who lost three limbs fighting the Viet Cong) to terror leader Osama bin Laden believe the Rev. Jerimiah Wright has made their jobs much, much easier this year.

Some are even starting to believe that Barack Obama, who attended Wright's church for two decades, would be an easier Democrat to beat than Hillary Clinton, who's been a catalyst for right-wing vitriol going on two decades now.

Don't expect to see an "I'm John McCain and I approved this message" tag at the end of any ads replaying some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's most incendiary comments ("US of KKK-A," "God damn America," et cetera). The Republican candidate's campaign says it won't make Wright an issue, and Clinton's camp has remained mum on the former pastor as the Democratic primary trudges on.

But an Obama-McCain general election likely would see attack ads from outside groups, so-called 527s, that have freer reign to launch anonymously funded attacks.

"I think it's an obligation of any opponent to use this issue, to make Reverend Wright a centerpiece of the campaign," Rep. Peter King (R-NY) tells Newsday.

Ari Fleischer, President Bush's former spokesman, lashed out at Obama in a speech Tuesday, perhaps testing some lines of attack that could re-emerge as the campaign continues.

"The statements that your clergy make when you join give a little bit of an indication of your own sense of right and wrong, and you cannot just divorce from that," Fleischer told a group of Jewish political activists in Washington.

"It really troubles me that Barack Obama only waited until now to speak out about this issue," Fleischer said. "He was like a typical politician: It became a controversy, so he distanced himself. This is a very worrisome sign to me."

Already facing trouble courting Jewish voters, Obama is likely to encounter further roadblocks with his association to Wright, who has made anti-Semitic remarks and is close to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Obama addressed Wright's comments in a speech Tuesday that was seen by many as one of the best examinations of race relations in a generation. He repudiated Wright's most controversial statements but did not completely disown the pastor he has know for 20 years. Wright recently retired from his role at Trinity United Church of Christ, a predominantly black church on Chicago's south side.

“It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial board, the network production people and the media into submission. Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest,” GOP media consultant Rick Wilson told Politico. “Not good enough.”

Wilson, who created the 2002 ad that invoked bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to attack Cleland, said Obama "associates with some real haters," and would face even harsher treatment if he was in the church when Wright unleashed some of his most controversial comments.

“Obama knows that if somebody puts him in church on some day that Wright said some crazy [stuff] like white people injected blacks with AIDS he’s in a world of hurt,” he said. “I would eat this up like cake.”

For months, Obama has been targeted by the equivalent of a virtual whisper campaign -- forwarded e-mails, right-wing bloggers and Free Republic message boards circulating false and scurrilous rumors about his religion and patriotism. Wright's comments could give the GOP machine an opportunity to amplify those whispers. Already a seemingly anonymous entity is circulating a YouTube video juxtaposing Obama and Wright's comments, which has received more than 30,000 hits in three days.

Obama has tried to become a post-racial candidate and his appeals to move beyond the divisive, fear-mongering, smear-based campaigns that have defined recent political history. The GOP doesn't seem to want to let him, and Wright's comments offer the perfect opportunity to return to mud slinging.

“It’s harder for people to say it’s taken out of context because these are Wright’s own words,” Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped create the Swift Boat ads, told Politico. “You let people draw their own conclusions.”

Here's my take on this:

I watched Obama's speech and I saw something there that may really be the special ticket for the Democrats this year.

The thing I'm seeing here, just taking my own extremely radical views out of this, is that the Democrats have a lot of built in advantages in this guy. He's going to make the slime machine look really bad, and he could do it with grace. Hillary just doesn't have that, she's the target that the whole nation can go off on in a very ugly political battle. My guess is she would be ugly too. And slime begets slime in that scenario.

With Obama, I think even McCain would be forced to see he needs to tone down his Republican slime machine -- whether he could or not, remains to be seen.

I think the surprise card for the Democrats in this election would be just that, something decent for the American people who are from what I can tell extremely sick of the slime, in a world that has come to see Americans become one of the worst collective citizens of the economically leading nation states of this planet. Now that may not be a collective understanding in the US, but it's certainly out there now.

I have a friend who just died a couple of months ago, he'd never voted anything but Republican. His father was a Republican state senator here in Washington. He was already planning to vote for Obama, which really surprised me. He said it was his intuitive sense of Obama's character that he found rare, it reminded him of his father. And no, he wasn't black. One of the reasons we are/were friends is we both are disgusted with the sliminess in politics. I really don't believe we (now just me) are alone.

I'm still trying to imagine who all these people are who vote for Hillary in these primaries. I don't even know anyone who speaks well of her. You'd think I'd know at least one person.

All logical arguments Ren.
Except the people who need the understanding the most, will be the ones who will not seek it out.

Those who would slam Obama because he's (gasp) black, aren't likely to watch any of Obama's word art and therefor isn't likely to be inspired, OR know the truth. In fact, many arent actually interested in the truth, unless that truth supports their own preconceived notions they grew up with and have in many cases been generational.

These are the people the GOP will reach out too. They will, because reaching out to the informed will not do them any good.
Once the spin is in place, the rest happens naturally.

I figure it's a numbers game. I haven't a clue what the potential numbers are, but the loss of voters to the game due to the slimy nature of politics itself is one of those numbers I'm thinking of. New young voters another. If Obama can set the standard for eloquence and dignity, who knows what cumuative effect that will have. He touched me and I'm pretty darn cynical.

The people who are already set in their ways will not be changed much by anything. If you have some strategy for getting to them, I'm sure you could find yourself in a position to make some big bucks in someone's campaign.

Obama had the courage, and dignity to say something somewhat complicated, but he managed to say it in a way that could be understood, because it has elements that directly relates to just about every one's daily experience in some clear way. Many issues we all know are true but are generally masked in hyperbole of how nice we are. He said how great we are but here's how we can be greater. That's a powerful message. Here's the thing that encourages me. The Clintons are now a long ways from that daily reality of "We the People." Hillary's far, far into the realms of the elites. Kerry was never there with us, neither was Bush. they are both from the same college, members of the elite Skull and Bones society, networked with some of the most powerfully influential people in the world.

Obama, on the other hand, is fresh, he has been there with the real people not that long ago, in a mixture of cultural settings, and also he's rubbed shoulders with the elites in the better colleges, and he's bright enough to compose his own speeches, not have a bevy of spin meisters do it, then try to deliver an obvious piece of propaganda. My guess from listening to this one is his hand was in it. It has that unmistakable ring of authenticity that's been so lacking in any words that come out of Bush's mouth, unless it's something extremely stupid and inappropriate, caught off mike.

Beyond that, it's a roll of the dice as to what these folks will come up with during the slime time that's sure to come. I don't see what point there is in fretting about it, the only thing you'll add is that feeling of helplessness.

I hope so Ren. Like you I'm also pretty cynical. Too often I have felt thing should have gone a certain way and it didn't.
I wouldn't be surprised to see it fall apart. Even so, the optomist in me keep a firm eyesight on hope.

He's going to be tested, now, Sky. I think he made a historical speech that only he could have made at this time in history. It shows signs of brilliance that I haven't seen in any politician though my lifetime. But now he's going to be tested by a century's worth of accumulated propaganda techniques and cruelly psychopathic mind manipulators the likes of which have never been bred by any culture before, and I'm even thinking of the Nazis, because the techniques we now have accumulated never existed all at once in human history, and the means to deliver it to a mass audience never existed.

If he can stay balanced and dignified throughout one of the most grueling tests ever devised, then he will certainly have earned his right to be elected President in my way of thinking. A right few can earn, and few ever have.

Why don't they just say what's on their mind?

"We can't trust uppity niggers. We're the GOP of racist ideologues, and we approved this message."

Hell Lib. That sounds like most Billary supporters. Much less the GOP.