Obama to confront the smear!

[LuckyTheDog]

Obama, to his credit, is not hiding from this latest Rovian smear.

He is confronting it.

The smear will backfire all over McCain.

Hey Obama:

:yourock:

[polichick]

1. What smear are you talking about??

[MonkeyFunk]

2. What's Rovian about it?

Nothing underhanded about this - Wright was selling the videos!

[izzybeans]

3. Nixonian or Reaganesque

is probably most accurate, given this is textbook southern strategy.

When it becomes about gun toting, flag waving, military worship sprinkled in with a whole lot of anti-glbt smear then you know Rove has step down from his baby crib and thrown his tantrum.

[LuckyTheDog]

4. They took 30 seconds

And presented that as "representative" of the whole church and Wright's entire career.

It was a smear.

[Peace Patriot]

5. This controversy strikes me as similar to the anti-Catholic smear against JFK

in 1960. There is only one way to confront it--and that is head-on. I remember that campaign. I was a volunteer in it (at age 16). I have never seen anything so foul as the pamphlets that were circulated about JFK and the Pope by what was, at that time, the rightwing fringe (now they run the government). JFK confronted it directly. He scheduled a speech in front the national Baptist convention (in Texas, as I recall), and directly spoke to the rightwing lie that a Catholic president would be controlled by the Vatican.

And he forever put to rest the bigoted political "wisdom" of the pundits--the upper layer of a foul, stinking, ugly, oppressive underbelly of hatred--that a Catholic could not be elected president, and was not fit to serve.

That hatred was twin to hatred of blacks, Chicanos, Jews, you name it. It is pure evil. Witch-burning. McCarthyism. It can target ANYONE and ANYTHING. It is the worst of human behavior. And I see it rearing its ugly head again, in the smears against Obama for things his MINISTER said (some of which I agree with, or at least find understandable--myself). But it has NOTHING TO DO with Obama. The Catholic Church treats women like second class citizens. The Pope said that women cannot be priests because they do not resemble Jesus PHYSICALLY (i.e., don't have pricks). Is John Kerry responsible for those views of the priests and bishops and the pope, who run the church that he attends? Should we not vote for him--or any Catholic--because of it? That is an insult to the politician. It presumes that he doesn't have a mind of his own. And, in the case of Obama, I think that is a RACIST view as well.

Obama needs to smack this one down--with grace and courage. Choose his venue--the rougher the better--and just give it a knockout punch.