Posted by
Always To The Right on Friday, February 29, 2008 2:42:25 PM
From the Captain on Obama, NAFTA, and the Canadians;
After reporting on Barack Obama's dance
with the Canadians on NAFTA yesterday, Canadian broadcaster CTV got
accused of perpetrating a smear against the Democratic front-runner.
They insisted that Obama meant every word he said about overturning the
free-trade treaty, and that no one had contacted the Canadian
diplomatic corps to reassure them that it was mere demagoguery. CTV
responded today by naming names -- and suddenly the Obama campaign has grown quiet . . .
CTV didn't stop there. They also announced that their sources, at "the
highest levels of the Canadian government", reconfirmed the story to
CTV. One of their primary sources provided a timeline of the discussion
to CTV. Contrary to some reports, CTV has not retreated at all from
this story.
Jim Geraghty notes . . .
Who is Austin Goolsbee? According to this press release
from last September, Goolsbee serves as the Senior Economic Advisor to
the Obama campaign. He was highly touted by Obama in his visit to Iowa
in that month, when he showed his intellectual chops by bringing
Goolsbee along with a raft of other advisers, in part to show that he
wasn't a political lightweight.
It will be rather hard to distance himself from Goolsbee at this point. If Goolsbee spent time reassuring the Canadians sotto voce
that Obama was merely demagoguing on NAFTA, then voters need to
understand that the supposed "new politics" of Obama smells very
similar to that of the same old lies and empty rhetoric we have heard
from the Beltway for decades. And without that "new politics", Obama is
nothing more than an empty suit with a pleasant voice.
UPDATE: ABC also gets some refusal to confirm or deny from both Goolsbee and the Canadian diplomat in question, Georges Rioux.