How Obama and his team will battle the GOP onslaught.
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There are no screamers on Team Obama; one senior Obama aide says he's heard him yell only twice in four years. Obama was explicit from the beginning: there was to be "no drama," he told his aides. "I don't want elbowing or finger-pointing. We're going to rise or fall together." Obama wanted steady, calm, focused leadership; he wanted to keep out the grandstanders and make sure the quiet dissenters spoke up. A good formula for running a campaign—or a presidency.
It worked against Hillary Clinton, whose own campaign has been rent by squabbling aides and turf battles. While Clinton veered between playing Queen Elizabeth I and Norma Rae, Obama and his team chugged along with a superior 50-state campaign strategy, racking up the delegates. If the candidate seemed weary and peevish or a little slow to respond at times, he never lost his cool. But the real test is yet to come. The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities. The 2008 race may turn on which party will win the lower- and middle-class whites in industrial and border states—the Democrats' base from the New Deal to the 1960s, but "Reagan Democrats" in most presidential elections since then. It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as "the other"—as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.
Obama says he's ready for the onslaught. "Yes, we know what's coming," he told a cheering crowd as he won the North Carolina primary last week. "We've seen it already … the attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain—to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white, black, brown."
Okay, what do we have here? For openers Obama is a quiet, thoughtful team player who values good advice which is "A good formula for running a campaign—or a presidency." By contrast all others pale when compared to his obviously competent leadership.
Next the Republican Party has been scaring voters since Richard Nixon. A double-good punch with scare and Nixon in the same thought mixed in with lies about Obama's religion which lessens Wright's odious thoughts and words. Not bad even for Newsweek when truth becomes bad and when the truth is used it is a scare tactic.
It's a wrap with Obama triumphantly facing down the Republicans continued attempts "to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain—to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white, black, brown."
Our fears? Would those be fears of what Obama will do as president? No, not at all because he is the best candidate. Obviously. It is also obvious to Newsweek's Obama campaign that Republicans need division and fear of a BLACK man who has a SECRET agenda of ISLAM to defeat the next JFK.
I really enjoy great campaigning especially when a campaign can seemingly pull everything together effortlessly, but when will Obama acknowledge this "in-kind" donation from their outside media consultants at Newsweek because this isn't reporting nor is it opinion. It's campaigning.
If the truth is bad then Newsweek should step up and admit it is bad to lie about those they want to defeat and it is bad to not be honest about their true role in this campaign.
HT to Gateway Pundit
