Exclusive: Thursday, July 10

by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH July 10, 2008

National Journal examines the differences between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain in a 10-part series looking at their policy records and proposals concerning the major issues in the presidential race. GO HERE.

View Steve Forbes on how Obama's tax plan would "ruin American economy." CLICK HERE.

'Obama will immediately birth Palestinian state'

Top P.A. official, former communist party head, hopes Democrat wins

Aaron Klein, WMD.com

The Palestinian Authority is hoping Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November and expects Obama to immediately set out to create a Palestinian state once he takes office, a top PA official said.

"We would like to see Obama elected. If he is elected, an agreement about the foundation of a Palestinian state (would be) reached," PA Planning Minister Samir Abdullah told reporters in Tokyo this weekend.

Abdullah, who is the former head of the Palestinian Communist Party, said the PA expects Obama to win in November. He said once the Illinois senator takes office, "he will immediately study the Palestinian cause and will try to push it forward."

"Obama promised he will not wait until the last period of his office to relaunch negotiations . he will begin doing this since his first day in office." Read article.

Flip-Flop Label Won't Stick to Obama as He Moves to the Right

Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh.com

We have Obama -- and, by the way, folks, on this flip-flop business, let's not use the word flip-flop. I don't think it's going to persuade anybody. It worked with Kerry because Kerry was such n idiot. I mean, his flip-flops were just funny. "I voted for it before I voted against it." You gotta remember one thing about these flip-flops, and I'm going to stop using the term here in just a second. Most people are not really paying close attention right now to all this, despite what might be record levels of attention, those of us who are involved in this on a day-to-day basis, we are absorbed, and we are detail-oriented; we know Obama upwards and forwards and backwards and hindwards and all that.

By the time most people start tuning in, his centrist positions, his so-called flip-flops, are actually going to be the things about him that they know. So we have to portray this guy as inexperienced, far leftist, despite what he's saying about moving to the center. You know what I find most irritating about this, all these moves to the center here, be it abortion, be it Iraq, by the way, did I not tell you a year ago -- I hate doing See, I Told You So's, folks, because it sounds like I've got a big ego and I don't have a big ego. My ego is totally a hundred percent in check. But I told you a year ago, that the Democrats, there's not one of these candidates running for the White House, that if they win are going to pull us out of Iraq if it means we lose.

They are not going to saddle themselves with a military defeat, mark my words, and I said that the far-left fringe kooks that define the left wing of the Democrat Party today are going to outraged when this happens, and they're going to say things like, "Hey, you know, Bush was not honest with us. He didn't tell us everything going on and now we find out what's going on, it would be a mistake to pull out now." There was no way this was ever going to happen, and, in fact, Obama now suggesting that he would be pragmatic about this and talk to the commanders -- I knew it. Read article.

The American Presidency: P.O.WS Need Not Apply

Lisa Richards, Lisa Richards.com

Nowhere in the Constitution does it state one must have or not served in the military if one is to ever be President of the United States.

Apparently if one has served this nation, was been shot down in the line of duty, injured severely and served five long years as a prisoner of war, one is not fit to serve as President of the United States. On the other hand if one sat on a splinter, stapled his pinky finger while fumbling with military documents, and received Purple Hearts for the severe splinter engraving and stapling slash, that man is a noble war hero created for Oval Office Executor.

It also helps that the man awarded medals for butt-splinters and suspiciously stapled fingers filmed him self gallantly swaggering through the jungles with machine gun in hand ala' Chuck Norris in "MISSING IN ACTION." It's even better he became an anti-war medal hurler; it made him a must choice for president.

Now we have a general-turned-constitutional expert explaining what it takes to become America's Commander and Chief.

Obama supporter General Wesley Clark made some odd statements on June 30, 2008 to CBS's Bob Schieffer who asked Clark if McCain's Vietnam service is relevant to making him a good president. The answer was a no; John McCain is not qualified to serve as president because he was a fighter pilot, a P.O.W. who chose to stay behind, despite his acquired release by his Admiral father, and underwent horrendous torture with his prison mates for five years. [Editor's Note: John Kerry spent fewer days in Vietnam than Barack Obama has spent in the U.S. Senate.] Read article.

Change We Can Believe In? Details To Follow

[Comical parody: template of standard Obama stump speech! Worth reading for chuckles!]

Mac Johnson, Townhall.com

Thank you [place name]! Tonight, the hard-working, long-suffering people of [place name] have a sent a message that echoes out across this great land of ours. From the forested coast of [some other place name] to the fertile fields of [third place name], the call for change has been heard in the factories and the farms and the foyers.

From the coal mines of [some place with coal] to the vineyards of [some place with grapes], and from the strip malls of liberal suburban areas to the student unions of overpriced universities, the people have told the powers that be in Washington and in the corporate boardrooms that they have had enough of the failed policies of the past.

They've had enough of government by the few for the fewer. They've had enough of tax breaks given to the rich for no other reason than that they are the ones actually paying taxes. And most of all, they've had enough of despair, and other things people generally don't want, such as hopelessness and cynicism.

These people may be a glaring, shiny white on the outside, but inside they know who they are. They are victims! Victims too long facing Big Oil and Big Drug companies without health insurance or hybrid crossover vehicles here in this, the greatest country on earth, which robs its people of hope. Read article.

McCain Campaign, in Relaunch, Seeks Tighter Message Focus

Elizabeth Holmes & Laura Meckler, Online WSJ.com

Topic of the Day: To Dominate Talk; A Rise in Surrogates

John McCain will spend the coming week talking about the economy, but the Republican presidential candidate isn't expected to say anything new. Rather, he will repackage proposals he has already outlined -- ones the campaign fears nobody heard.

"We don't think we've made the case eloquently," Doug Holtz-Eakin, the campaign's policy director, said.

With four months until Election Day, and four months since Sen. McCain secured his party's nomination, the Arizona senator is relaunching his campaign. Trailing Democrat Barack Obama in the polls and dogged by the dismal approval ratings for the administration of George W. Bush, the campaign rearranged its staff last week. The primary reason: to sharpen its messages.

The goal is to put out a consistent message each day that can penetrate voters' minds. The ability to control a certain story line through a 24-hour news cycle is seen as one element of a successful modern political campaign and, so far, Sen. Obama has been seen as better at sticking to his chosen theme for a day than has Sen. McCain. Read article.

McCain to get air cover from vets

Mike Allen, Politico.com

For the first time, the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is about to get a substantial hand from advertisements by an outside group.

Conservative and Republican groups have been largely quiet, leaving McCain heavily outmatched by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign fundraising juggernaut.

Next week, Vets for Freedom - a 20,000-member, nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - plans to begin spending more than $1 million on a TV campaign that will include Ohio, Virginia and New Mexico.

The group plans to spend millions more and to add other states to the roster over the next four months.

The ad, the largest independent expenditure on a national-security theme in the general election so far, features a number of vets speaking about the success of the surge and the need to finish the job. Read article.

Republicans Discover Oil

Reid Wilson, Online WSJ.com

Here's a piece of intelligence from the field that the McCain campaign should take careful note of: Republicans in difficult House races are spending scarce campaign dollars to travel to Alaska to dramatize their stance on the drilling issue.

The five GOP candidates, traveling as a group, will stop off in Anchorage to meet with industry experts and local officials - Alaskans of both parties overwhelmingly favor drilling in ANWR - before making the final hour-and-a-half flight to the refuge.

Talk about seismic. In February, only 42% of voters supported drilling in a Pew poll while 50% were opposed. Those numbers are reversed in the latest poll. Republicans have found an issue for November. Now if John McCain can just figure it out. Read article.

Why Barack Obama may be lonely in 2009: What Europe wants now: right-wing leaders with left-wing ideas

Doug Saunders, Globe & Mail.com

When Barack Obama lands in Europe for his first big international tour this month, the Democratic presidential candidate may be shocked to find himself standing in the middle of a vast, blood-soaked plain littered with the bodies of his political allies.

He will see left-wing parties that have reached their lowest popularity levels in a generation and in most cases have all but slid into non-existence. And it's getting worse. If he becomes president, by the end of 2009 Mr. Obama almost certainly will be the only left-wing leader remaining among the Group of Eight nations and one of only two or three left-leaning heads of state in the Western world. Once again, America will be going it alone.

It is a darkly ironic reversal of fortunes: At the start of the decade, a conservative such as George W. Bush was almost alone in the world; today, the world is being overtaken by conservative leaders - though not necessarily, as we shall see, by their ideas. Ten years ago, Newsweek magazine proclaimed that, "with the exception of Spain, every major country in Western Europe is now run by a left-of-centre party," adding tellingly that "conservative political parties keep winning policy debates and then losing elections." Today, almost the opposite is true. Across Europe, the left is collapsing. Read article.

Wedding Belle

George Neumayr, Spectator.org

For reasons of raw politics, Democratic presidential nominees can't say they support gay marriage, though they obviously do. So they send their wives out to say it for them.

In 2004, as John Kerry went through the motions of trying to head-fake Americans on gay marriage, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, was telling an audience in San Francisco that "we'll get there." Gay marriage, she assured the crowd, would and should happen "with time and without a lot of politicization of this." She was sure the country would "evolveI think our country is basically a tolerant country."

Similarly, Barack Obama is faking up some tortured, difficult-to-follow position in nominal opposition to gay marriage while dispatching his wife to signal the opposite before a crowd of the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community" in New York City.

"Barack is not new to the cause of the LGBT community," she said to the Democratic National Committee's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council last week. She said her husband supports "full equality" for them, which is why he endorses -- here she tried out a new euphemism -- "robust civil unions." Not just civil unions, but robust civil unions.

Since liberalism defines equality as sameness and brooks no distinctions, "full equality" means Obama's support for "robust civil unions" will become, once the political coast is clear, support for national gay marriage. Read article.

McCain, Obama, & the Catholic Vote - Which one is a natural?

Ryan T. Anderson, Weekly Standard.com

While a number of Catholics have been waxing rhapsodic about Barack Obama's appeal, it seems to have gone unnoticed that John McCain is running on an astonishingly Catholic platform. Nearly every time he ventures off the conservative plantation, he moves in the direction of liberal Catholic politics. Could this translate into votes in the fall?

Despite the enthusiasm of his Catholic fans, Obama consistently ran behind Hillary Clinton among Catholic Democrats. Just 30 percent voted for him in Pennsylvania, for instance, even with the backing of the state's premier pro-life Democrat, Senator Bob Casey Jr.

Yet Obama's troubles winning actual Catholic voters in the Democratic primaries suggest he might have problems in the general election. Obama has opposed every effort to protect unborn human life, including the Supreme Court's upholding of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Obama even voted against an anti-infanticide bill to protect the lives of babies who survive an abortion and are born alive.

The contrast with McCain is stark. And yet McCain has had his own Catholic problems. Rick Santorum, the posterboy for conservative Catholic causes, argued during the primaries that McCain was no social conservative. Read article.

CNN poll shows Obama going backwards with Democrats

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com

How's that backflip to the center working for Barack Obama? According to CNN polling, he has managed to lose Democrats rather than heal the party after an often-bitter primary. Hillary Clinton has gained eight points in the poll since conceding to Obama, and more of her supporters now say they will stay home rather than cast a vote for the man who bested their favorite:

One week after Sen. Hillary Clinton made a public show of unity with Sen. Barack Obama, a new survey suggests supporters of the New York senator are increasingly less likely to follow her lead.

A growing number of Clinton supporters polled say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, an indication the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain's camp is down from one month ago, but - in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party - the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all. Read article.

It's Time for Rage

Michael Reagan, Human Events.com

Americans are worried. Americans are angry. Soaring gas prices are seriously crippling our economy and hitting us where it hurts the most -- in our pockets.

We have a right to be angry, but anger is no longer enough. It's time for rage -- good, old American rage aimed at those elitist Democrats who prefer to see the folks beggared by soaring fuel prices rather than take the action this very real economic crisis demands.

Drill.

Once Americans become aware of that reason, get out of the way because they will be at the gates of Capitol Hill armed with pitchforks and scythes like enraged villagers marching on Dracula's castle, determined do wreak vengeance on the very people who refuse to act in the way current circumstances clearly demand.

The Democrats in Congress have in their hands the magic wand they could easily wave, but they arrogantly refuse to use it. And so we continue to pay the price for their refusal to help their fellow Americans when they have the power to do so.

All they need to do is lift all moratoria and restrictions on domestic, offshore and Alaskan drilling for oil. That's all. A quick wave of that magic wand is all that's needed. But they will not act, and for that they must be made aware that they will pay a steep price at the polls for their refusal to act when action is desperately needed.

Are you listening, John McCain? Read article.

Focus on Flip-Flops: the McCain Edition

Angie Drobnic Holan, PolitiFact.com

It's easy to say a candidate flip-flops. But what does that mean? We look at the various claims against John McCain.

In a Democrat vs. Republican Face-Off, U.S. Sens. Joe Biden and Lindsey Graham traded flip-flopping charges against their respective parties' nominees for president.

Biden said McCain has changed position on offshore drilling. We looked into McCain's record on drilling and found that McCain's position is not so simple as for or against. McCain used to say, and continues to say, that states have the right to determine whether to permit drilling off their own coasts. But previously, McCain never expressed his own preference as to whether states should allow it or not.

Biden also said McCain has changed positions on Iraq. McCain definitely is a consistent supporter of the war and predicted a relatively fast invasion.

McCain has also changed position on ethanol, a biofuel popular with Iowa's corn farmers. He used to oppose it, saying he was willing to tell people things they don't want to hear. Now he favors it, citing the new situation of a growing energy crisis. "I have adjusted to the realities of the world we live in today, and if I don't adjust to those realities, then I would be stuck in the past," Read article.

15 Congressional Races to Watch

Citizen Jane Politics.com

I couldn't resist posting about this great feature from TIME Magazine. TIME has an article on the top 15 House and Senate races to watch this year around the country, complete with background history on each of the races and the candidates. Check it out to see if your state or district is mentioned - and even if it isn't, these races are still likely to have a national impact and shape the direction Congress takes in the next two years. Though the races are smaller, their impact is still huge, so it's never too early to start brushing up on your congressional candidates! Check out TIME Magazine's feature here.