Obama, Afraid
Written by ChemistryDave on June 22nd, 2008There is some chatter that this ad, run in South Dakota during the primary, triggered Obama’s decision to opt out of public campaign financing. Whatever you think of the content, ads like this will have a devastating impact on some voters. More details here.
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First off, this video is shameful. This kind of stuff makes me embarrassed to be associated with the party.
Second, Obama has been saying for six months now that he wouldn’t go with public financing, so I doubt this ad had much to do with his decision. Originally he and McCain both indicated that they would take the federal funds (this was a year ago). At the time, both Obama and McCain were looking like long-shots for their respective nominations, so this was an easy enough pledge to make.
McCain locked into the public financing contract early so the feds would bail out his bankrupt primary campaign. Once he came out ahead in the primary, he filed to be allowed out of his FEC contract, but his appeal was denied. Meanwhile, by January this year, Obama was benefiting from millions of ten and twenty dollar donors online, and suddenly realized he’d really be shortchanging himself to go with the feds. He’s been hinting for months that he’ll be privately financed.
Now he’s made the official announcement and he’s come up with some kind of rhetoric to try to justify his decision..something about being able to reach millions of voters who would be left behind by a minimally-financed campaign.
Now I personally don’t think it had to do with championing small state voters or with the SD ad. I think it simply came down to wanting more money to compete in the battleground states.
The real question is not what prompted the decision, the question is whether it will be worth it once McCain starts working the “Unlike my opponent, I’m a man of my word” angle.
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JUNE 2008: Barack Obama Tells The USA Today That He Would Pursue A Public Financing Agreement With John McCain.
“On campaign finance. Obama said he’ll accept public financing for his campaign — which would limit the amount of spending — only if McCain agrees to curb spending by the Republican National Committee. ‘I won’t disarm unilaterally,’ he said.” (Kathy Kiely, “Obama Reaching Out To The White Working Class,” USA Today, 6/6/08)
After all that — more than a dozen reiterations of his commitment to accept public financing for the general election — Obama again makes it clear that you can not believe what he says. On June 19, 2008 Obama announced he decided to break his word yet again.
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And Barbara, the ad wasnt run by the party, it was run by some 527.
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obviously, Dave. It says quite clearly that the ad was funded by a PAC called “the coalition against anti-christian rhetoric.” I am making the assumption that that particular organization (if you can call it that) is merely funded by Republicans.
In my earlier post I simply recounted the history of the financing claims of the two candidates. Some people don’t realize how long this has been going on. If you read to the end of my post, you’ll see that I wasn’t defending Obama. I think this is another instance in which we’re getting a glimpse of a personal weakness of his…he has trouble making decisions for the long-term and he tends to see trees instead of forests.
But like I said, Obama has been hinting for months that he’d back out of his original pledge to go with public financing. The headlines about this reversal first surfaced back in January and February. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/us/politics/16campaign.html In the last several months he has also at times (though not near as often) said that he would go the public financing route with McCain.
McCain, meanwhile, a late as January, was still officially “undecided” on public financing, even though he had already signed the FEC contracts and used the funds as collateral months earlier. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aonCz2SxcRZ0 Early this year he wanted out of his contract so badly ha he established an independent fund and asked his supporters for donations to help cover his legal costs to appeal himself out of his federal financing commitment. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/us/politics/22finance.html It was only when this effort failed that McCain started saying he’d “honor” his pledge to stick with public financing. Sticking by your word when the judge says you have to…now that’s downright honorable.
So it’s hard to make an argument that either one of these guys is somehow got some kind of moral authority on this matter. Any reasonably objective reader should be able to see that they’re both just politicians trying to get the upper hand.
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The speech that the “Muslim Nation” quote in this ad is pulled from is a speech by Obama that should be watched or read in full. It was given in 2006 at a Call to Renewal conference sponsored by Sojourners.
I did a post on it in February:
http://paulsnatchko.blogspot.com/2008/02/fair-minded.html
FWIW, it ended with his reflection on a letter he received from a pro-life doctor that changed some of the rhetoric on his Website that was against pro-lifers.