Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 2:04:06 PM
Barack Obama did a double-twist on free speech yesterday in reaction to
the ad produced by an outside political group regarding his association
with William Ayers. After his own campaign produced an ad that Factcheck called a “smear”produced a response ad and then demanded that the Department of Justice investigate American Issues while pressuring television stations to reject the ad
tying Jack Abramoff to John McCain through Ralph Reed, American Issues
produced an ad that pointed out Obama’s political ties to the
unrepentant former domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Instead of
letting it drop, Obama’s campaign took two really stupid actions: they
One has to wonder why the Obama campaign wants to stage a complete
meltdown on the Ayers issue. Team Obama has thrilled the netroots by
saying they won’t be “Swiftboated”, but there isn’t anything factually
inaccurate in the ads. Obama’s own response boils down to this: “Ayers
tossed bombs a long time ago, and who cares what he thinks now?”
Plenty of people care about Presidential candidates who feel
comfortable with bomb-tossers as friends, and the more Obama keeps the
story alive, the more the media will pay attention and more voters will
discover this connection.
They have compounded it by demanding a criminal probe into a group
that works for political advocacy. The arcane regulations of political
advertising will fly over most people’s heads, but bullying people
through the Department of Justice as a candidate will cause reasonable people to wonder what will happen if Obama gets elected. Most
Americans will see this as Obama trying to silence someone with an
inconvenient political point of view, not as a defense of a
campaign-finance system that’s already egregious enough as it is
without this kind of precedent.