Category: Politics

In my earlier post today, I pointed out how the Democrats are so married to their failed campaign tactics, they’re dragging them all out to the 2008 campaign. Little did I know how right I was. At the time I was banging these keys, Obama was in North Carolina dragging out the most failed campaign tactic of them all – John Edwards (Breitbart link);

Barack Obama sneaked down to North Carolina Sunday and met with former rival John Edwards, who has yet to make an endorsement in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Officials at North Carolina television station WTVD said they have video taken from a helicopter of Obama leaving Edwards’ home in Chapel Hill. A producer said the station was “tipped off” about the meeting, but said the source was confidential.

The Obama campaign confirmed the meeting. Although reporters normally travel everywhere with Obama, he left them behind to fly down in secret from his hometown.

“Senator Obama visited this morning with John and Elizabeth Edwards at their home in Chapel Hill to discuss the state of the campaign and the pressing issues facing American families,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. He wouldn’t comment on the possibility of an endorsement.

I guess it’s because they think they have the right message to voters, just that they can’t find the right messenger that drives them back to their failed candidates. John Edwards, always the bridesmaid, is the new Al Gore, the new John Kerry, the new Walter Mondale – in fact you can point to more failures than successes in the political party that has elected only two Presidents in the last forty years.

Remember that Hillary was conspiring against Obama with Edwards a scant few weeks ago (CNN Link). I guess it’s lucky that Edwards has the new isolated house that Fox affiliates can find easily enough to get paparazzi shots of the Edwards acolytes – the new generation of failed political ideologies.

But then, maybe the Clintons have a winning new strategy – Bill smacking around Obama’s black supporters. (MSNBC link h/t to Discarded Lies)

The Democrat candidates try their level best to draw distinctions between themselves and any Republican candidate, according to the Wall Street Journal;

The candidates have made broad attacks on corporate wealth and tax cuts they say tilt toward the rich, along with more specific attacks against health insurers and oil companies, among other industries. On Friday, Mrs. Clinton began airing a TV spot in Wisconsin in which she says, “The oil companies, the drug companies, have had seven years of a president who stands up for them…. It’s time we had a president who stands up for all of you.”

Both candidates increasingly sound like former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as they pursue his endorsement and the voters — particularly union members — who were drawn to the populist candidate before he dropped out last month. Illinois Sen. Obama got a boost toward that goal Friday with the backing of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically powerful labor organizations.

Typical Democrat strategy, assume the mantle of the defeated. Since John Edwards’ candidacy failed, both Clinton and Obama want to act like him. That’s a real winning strategy. So the DNC, unable to formulate a winning strategy for their prospective candidates make sophomoric attacks against John McCain instead;

Even as he acknowledged that our economy is headed towards a recession, McCain offered no answers about how to rebuild the economy, address concerns hard working Americans face or the mortgage crisis. Instead, McCain promised to make the President’s tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, pledged not to raise any new taxes and said he’d pay for it all with pork barrel spending reform. McCain’s approach just won’t work. As the Senate Budget Office recently reported, extending the Bush tax cuts and continuing the war is a recipe for a $6 trillion dollar deficit, something McCain can’t possibly pay for by reducing $35 billion in earmarks and pork spending.

McCain also ducked the fact that he was more worried about alienating the right wing of his party than supporting the economic stimulus package when he failed to show up for critical votes on the measure.

McCain also continued his pattern of marching in lockstep with President Bush on Iraq, a rallying point for the right wing of his party but not the rest of America. Five years ago this weekend, Vice President Cheney said Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, a talking point McCain dutifully repeated. Now, when asked about establishing permanent bases in Iraq, McCain echoed the President’s talking points by pointing out that there are other status of forces agreements that “have never been approved by Congress.” From parroting the misleading case for war to President Bush’s rosy rhetoric and stay the course strategy, McCain has marched in lockstep with President Bush every step of the way and now wants to keep our troops there for 100 years.

“John McCain showed today that he is about as far from a maverick as they come,” said DNC Communications Director Karen Finney. “How can the American people trust John McCain when time and time again he’s shown that he will compromise his principles to win the election and has no new ideas to address the challenges we face? Whether it’s promoting more fiscal irresponsibility or a 100 year war in Iraq, McCain offers nothing more than a third Bush term.”

So basically, the Democrat strategy is to sell us the same old tired and failed Democrat social programs, wrapped in the new-style sexual/racial politics and to rerun the 2004 campaign against President Bush, with a smidgen of the 1992/1996 campaigns thrown in for good measure. So that’s change, huh?

Just wonderful:

President Daniel Ortega, who led the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, says Barack Obama’s presidential bid is a “revolutionary” phenomenon in the United States.

“It’s not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. … but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change,” the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university.

Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election. He returned to office last year via the ballot box.

In statements broadcast on Sandinista Radio La Primerisima, Ortega said he has “faith in God and in the North American people, and above all in the youth, that the moment of great change in the U.S. will come and it will act differently, with justice and equality toward all nations.”

Ortega returned to power with the same communist agenda as before, along with a state-owned media to propagate his message. Seems like old times.

Naturally, he pushes illegal immigration:

Ortega also called Obama a spokesman for the millions of Central American and Mexican citizens who migrate to the U.S. in search of work, though polls indicate most Latino voters so far have favored Clinton over Obama.

And echoes the left’s harangue over the former “School of the America”:

Also Wednesday, Ortega gave approval to various army officials to receive training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, operated by the U.S. Defense Department in Fort Benning, Georgia ” even as he said he would continue to lobby for the school’s closure.

Pot, meet kettle:

The president claims that members of the now-defunct National Guard who were trained at the school, formerly known as the School of the Americas, were involved in torture. Human rights groups say graduates went on to commit abuses throughout Latin America.
…Ortega did not explain why he approved the training, but said he would try to ensure officials did not turn into”torturers and killers.”

Link: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/14/america/LA-POL-Nicaragua-Ortega-Obama.php

For Americans with short memories, Ortega was the leader of the communist Sandinistas who flourished as an extention of Soviet influence in Central America in the 80’s. He and his merry band of revolutionary thugs were responsible for slaughtering dissidents and Miskito Indians, who wouldn’t knuckle under the Marxist-Leninist theory of indoctrination.

Ortega subjugated the Catholic Church, suppressed the media, and imprisoned and executed “counter-revolutionaries” by the thousands.

While leftist asshats like columnist William Greider chirped praise for Ortega and railed against the Contras, members of La Prensa, an outspoken newspaper in Nicaragua, were repeatedly harassed, jailed, censored, and forced into exile.

The Sandinistas continued their bloodbath until they were were ousted during the 1990 elections.

Since then, Ortega has been a political chameleon, changing with whatever opportunity presents, and was re-elected in 2006.

Ortega is in a tight spot. The Soviet safety net is gone, and he has to rely on the capitalist system for handouts; U.S. foreign aid and the International Monetary Fund. Nicaraguan youth, too young to remember the Sandinista rule, enthusiastically greeted his election.

Unstable regions of the world like Central America have always been a playground for socialism and communist regimes. The Left adopts leaders of these movements as darlings; without being subjected to the consequences. It’s no wonder despots like Ortega endorse Democrat candidates.

Obama should be proud.