Regardless of Barack Obama’s merits as a presidential candidate, I can’t help but notice that the right really wants to attack him, but hasn’t quite figured out how.
There’s ample room for criticism of Obama and his likely presidential ambitions — his inexperience is obviously at the top of the list — but his limited tenure and brief political career have left his conservative critics in a bit of a jam. It’s not enough to simply criticize Obama for being untested, which is a mild smear at best, so the right is left grasping at straws. Seeing what they’ve come up with is almost amusing.
Larry Kudlow, for example, criticized Obama for embracing Democratic Party policies, including support for raising the minimum wage and opposition to Social Security privatization and drilling in ANWR. Similarly, Fred Barnes went after Obama for holding traditionally liberal policy views. This is hardly fodder for a smear campaign.
Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to think outside the box.
RUSH: Obama up in New Hampshire being treated like a god making a speech. Now, apparently before he made the speech, Maureen Dowd had written something about his big ears. Obama, after the speech, made a beeline for Maureen Dowd who was in the audience to tell her that he didn’t appreciate her writing about his big ears. Now, there’s a lot of noise here and it’s very muddy. I’ll translate it for you, but here’s how it sounded.
OBAMA: Talk about my ears. So I just want to put you on notice, I’m very sensitive about — what I told them was I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.
DOWD: We’re just trying to toughen you up.
RUSH: “We’re just trying to toughen you up.” Here is what Barack Obama said. “Talk about my ears. So I just want to put you on notice, I’m very sensitive about — what I told them was I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” Now, there are many aspects of this, folks, that we need to delve into and explore. For one thing, I mean you know me, if the guy’s sensitive about his big ears, we need to give him a new name, like Dumbo. But that doesn’t quite get it. How about Barack Obama Hussein Odumbo.
That’s what it’s come to. “Barack Obama Hussein Odumbo.” Wow.
I suppose it’s worth adding that Limbaugh’s cohorts are hardly cleverer in their attacks.
Sen. Barack Obama’s office is responding to charges from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that the Illinois Democrat is attempting to conceal his liberal views and that his record in the Senate is comparable to that of a “Marxist Leftist.”
DeLay is also urging conservative bloggers to begin digging into Obama’s past.
A spokesperson for the senator says voters want to “move beyond” Delay’s “name-calling.”
Peter LaBarbera, an anti-gay activist, meanwhile, decided to attack Obama because his Christian denomination isn’t conservative enough.
Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination and attends Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, according to UCC News.
“The United Church of Christ has now merged with the largest gay church in the world, called the Cathedral of Hope, in Texas,” LaBarbera notes. “And so they’re welcoming in churches that are embracing homosexuality, so they’ve become one of the most liberal denominations in the country.”
How counter-intuitive — a right-winger attacking a Democrat for going to church.
I’m sure GOP attack dogs will dig up plenty of dirt on Obama, and if they don’t, they’ll make stuff up. But in the meantime, we’re left with a progressive, church-going Democrat with big ears. C’mon, right-wing machine, what kind of smear-job is this?
