I saw this out of the corner of my eye on MSNBC earlier today, and couldn't believe my ears - a Republican speaking with dripping derision about "the outrage" of Obama "taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma." Keith Olbermann performed the important service of replaying and highlighting this on Countdown tonight - important, because it shows just what low level of humanity some Republicans occupy.
This is a party that regularly trumpets itself as the party of "family values". And its spokeman calls Barack Obama's visit to his gravely ill grandmother, on whatever the plane, an "outrage"?
Brad Blakeman, the Republican strategist who spoke this, did not even have the decency to refer to Barack Obama's grandmother as his "grandmother". What point was Blakeman trying to make - that Obama loves his grandmother so much, that she is someone Obama is so close to, that she is better termed his "grandma" than "grandmother".
It's impossible to get into the mind of someone who in any way would make light of anyone going back home to see his or her seriously ill grandmother.
But what Blakeman said is unfortunately consistent with what I've been seeing and hearing from a variety of Republican strategists and supporters in the past few weeks. As McCain's chances dwindle, these lowlifes lose all pretense of dignity and accuracy. Their opponents become "socialist" and "anti-American," and a man galvanizing the nation in his heroic run for President becomes a target of their abuse and contempt for the way he chooses to visit his 85-year old very ill grandmother.
As I've urged here before, I can only hope that Republicans who are decent human beings read Blakeman and his ilk out of the party.
4 comments:
Paul- You know I condemn all these wackos but why is it MSNBC that trots these crackpots on? It seems like every Republican they have on, does some kind of damage. Now I don't watch the network, but I consistantly hear it is in the gutter. Anything to that?
Frank, I would say that MSNBC is to the left what Fox is to the right. Neither is in the gutter.
But, whatever the tone and political valence of the medium, no one put those words in Blakeman's mouth.
I'm glad to see you condemn them. I believe in our two-party system, and I think there will need to be a lot of rebuilding of the Republican Party after this election (or perhaps the best of the Republicans will form a new party, that offers better alternatives to the Democrats that what is currently being offered by the GOP).
100% correct. They certainly need to make serious adjustments and find the right people. I outlined all this in my article critiquing the GOP. After the election, there is a long list of laundry they need to do, which starts with making sure Bush goes back to Texas and crawls under a rock.
This reaction is really disheartening. I blogged about Obama's visit to Hawaii and noted that it was an unusually classy and humanistic move, coming out of the mechanisms of a campaign. I think it shows a lot about Obama that he made this happen so close to the election. To attack this move is so unbelievably tacky and out of touch with they way people feel about real-life situations. It might be hard for a lifelong strategist to realize this, but sometimes other things are more important to people than political campaigns.
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