Thursday, March 13, 2008 - Posts
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So much for taking the day off.
All three presidential candidates returned to Washington, D.C., today to vote on a Senate bill that would put a moratorium on earmarks for a year. John McCain drafted the bill, and both Clinton and Obama have been trying to one-up each other’s hatred of earmarks, so naturally they all wanted to be seen supporting the ban.
But now, thanks to some strategic Democratic jockeying, the bill won’t come to a vote until later tonight. At which point, the candidates will have left for the trail—and McCain won’t be able to tout his vote on the bill. (Either way, it’s expected to fail.)
Still, the candidates did manage to score points during the day. To coincide with the vote, Obama’s campaign released all the earmarks he secured for Illinois in fiscal year 2007 and challenged Clinton to do the same. It’s the latest volley in the Obama campaign’s case that Clinton lacks transparency; they’ve been urging her to release her papers stored in the Clinton Presidential Library as well as her tax returns. However, the Associated Press points out that Obama has ignored requests for the same information related to his years as an Illinois state senator.
The funny thing is, you can barely call the earmarks issue a “debate” anymore, at least on the campaign trail. The candidates all agree! Sure, they can bicker over who opposed earmarks first and most vigorously. McCain sent out a memo today congratulating Democrats on their “new-found enthusiasm for suspending this practice for a year.” Obama’s transparency gambit is meant to make Clinton look soft on the issue. But in the end, they’re all anti-pork—a fact that could neuter what would otherwise be a strong weapon for McCain. Now if only they could vote on it.
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So this is why he refused to fully commit to a withdrawal. Let the Ron Paul comeback begin!
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… And goes
for it.
On a day when McCain is highlighting his own ethical
cleanliness by trying
to abolish earmarks for a year, Obama dings McCain for perhaps his most egregious
policy reversal: Bush’s tax cuts.
The logic of why he first voted against the tax cuts, then
supported making them permanent, is contorted at best. Jonathan Chait summed
it up most pithily:
McCain explained that his position was perfectly consistent
because, while he may have opposed the tax cuts in the first place, letting
them expire would amount to a tax hike; and, he said, "I've never voted
for a tax increase in twenty-four years . . . and I will never vote for a tax
increase, nor support a tax increase." In fact, McCain had proposed a
tobacco tax increase in 1998. Nor would his position have made sense anyway.
(Some economists favor higher tax rates and others prefer lower tax rates, but
none would oppose a tax cut and then oppose its repeal simply because it had
already been enacted.)
Now McCain says he thinks the tax cuts are necessary to
support a flagging economy. But Obama has an easy retort: How would you know? McCain himself admitted that he knows “a lot
less about economics than … about military and foreign policy issues.” The
flip-flop/confession combo is likely to be one of the strongest weapons against
McCain in the general. No surprise Obama wanted to be seen as the first one to
use it.
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Is Jeremiah Wright untouchable?
Barack Obama’s minister, who leads the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and who coined the phrase "the audacity of hope," has said some controversial things over the years. But new videos of his sermons, purchased and reported on by Fox News, could up the ante. Especially the one in which he goes after Hillary: "Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty," Wright said.
Obama has distanced himself from Wright in the past, comparing him to "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," but he hasn’t severed ties. (Wright serves on his African-American Religious Leadership Committee.) In fact, the Obama campaign doesn’t seem to have done anything to restrain Wright, or at least not successfully: He delivered the "Hillary" speech on Jan. 13 of this year.
Curiously, though, Clinton hasn’t spoken out. After the resignations of Samantha Power last week and Geraldine Ferraro yesterday, you’d think both campaigns would have a hair trigger when it comes to insults. Clinton was also adamant that Obama "reject and denounce" Louis Farrakhan. Wright hasn’t insulted entire groups of people like Farrakhan did, but, still, why give him a free pass? Also, it’s not just about Hillary’s pride. Wright may have violated tax code rules that prohibit churches from participating in political campaigns. It’s unclear whether the IRS will take action, but a rival campaign could legitimately gripe about it.
Three theories on why Clinton is holding back: 1) She doesn’t want to start a race war—at least not right now. Ferraro did enough damage by claiming she was being attacked "because I’m white." To go after Wright would look as if they’re trying to push the same narrative. 2) Wright is enormously popular. It’s not as if Hillary is going to be making inroads on the African-American vote anytime soon—Obama won 91 percent of blacks in Mississippi—but she’d rather not piss off people whose vote she needs in the general. 3) Wright is right. However inflammatory his rhetoric, his basic case against Hillary—that she doesn’t understand the American black experience in the way Obama does—is irrefutable. "Hillary Clinton has never been called a nigger," he said in one video. And it’s something Clinton would rather not draw attention to. While his words were disrespectful, they weren’t necessarily wrong.
If Clinton does in fact come out and condemn Wright, it will be Obama’s purest test of loyalty vs. exigency. It’s one thing to distance yourself from a friend and quietly ask him to tone it down. It’s another to throw him under the bus.
Update 2:55 p.m.: Instaputz points out a fourth possible reason for Clinton to hold back: Her own pastor's unseemly remarks.
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Always count on Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell to speak slightly too candidly. In a conference call just now, he responded to a question about Hillary Clinton’s unfavorability rating, which hovers around 43 percent: “When this started a year ago, I didn’t like Hillary Clinton.”
Rendell went on to speculate that by fall, Clinton’s unfavorables “will be down 8, 10, 12, 14 percent.” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who was also in on the call, agreed, “As people get to know you and know what you’re about, a lot of that stuff goes off to the side.”
Who knows, maybe they’re right. But if eight years as first lady, six years as a U.S. senator, and more than a year on the campaign trail haven’t given people a chance to “get to know” Clinton, why should the next eight months be different?
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