Obama Seeks to Silence Discussion of Ayers
The Obama link with Bill Ayers has been heating up lately in the press, and for good reason. That Obama has been a close friend of Ayers, and that Ayers is a huge political supporter of Obama (including helping him get his start in politics), is an important piece of information that the public should be made aware of.
Or, if you’re Obama, you surely believe that the public should not be made aware of it. Reading how Obama’s campaign has been trying to handle this issue reminds me heavily of the Clinton years. That is, when your opposition is trying to push out information that can destroy your political power, you do everything you can to shut them up.
Last week, the group American Issues Project released a commercial clearly outlining the links between Obama and Ayers.
Obama’s initial response was to blame the whole thing on McCain – whose campaign wasn’t a part of this commercial at all. But Obama’s response only highlighted the issue further, and the media picked it up that much more. So Obama’s campaign filed a complaint with the Justice Department against the American Issues Project, claiming that they violated FEC rules by running the ad.
Recently, Stanley Kurtz wrote an article for the National Review outlining the Obama-Ayers links, and his efforts to get access to archives at the Univsirty of Illinois at Chicago (where Ayers is a professor) that would further provide evidence of their close association while Obama served on a board of a group that Ayers founded at the university.
These records were only recently released a couple of days ago – after a lot of suspicious runarounds with the University (detailed in Kurtz’ article, which was written before the University finally agreed to release the documents). Thus, Kurtz has a lot of light to shed on this issue as he has been pouring over this material over the last couple of days.
Kurtz was to be on WGN radio in Chicago last night to discuss this, but Obama sought to have all discussion of the topic removed from the station:
“WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears,” Obama’s campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.”
The Obama campaign also urged supporters to flood the radio station with complaint calls. The Milt Rosenburg show asked the Obama campaign to send someone to appear on the show to respond, but that didn’t happen. Obama has steadfastly refused pretty much any talk radio appearance requests.
This is Obama’s playbook – any time serious criticism is leveled against him, you do what you can to shut them up. Tell them your wife is off-limits (though she’s campaigning heavily for you). Characterize them as as “right-wing hatchet man,” a “smear-merchant,” pushing “fear-mongering terrorist smears.” Oh, and of course, you have to accuse them of “lowering the standards of political discourse.” Then for good measure, file a complaint against them with the Justice Department, and hope that an investigation will either cost them a lot of money, or hopefully shut them down altogether.
This is the kind of tactic any typical politician would take – when you can’t argue against a position, demonize the opposition and if possible, shut them down. If you seriously think that Obama, who was been handed multiple elections by a corrupt Chicago poltical machine, represents any “new kind of politics,” you’re going to be very, very disappointed.
This is the kind of tactic Obama uses while a candidate. Imagine what would happen if he becomes the president. Given that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats want to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine, it would be easy for Democrats to squelch this kind of opposition using new FCC rules once they have full control of the government.
More of the same.
UPDATE: more links on this story: Michelle Malkin includes some comments from people who listened to the show and how some of Obama’s supporters were trying to disrupt it.