Exclusive: Saturday, July 12

by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH July 12, 2008

For the truth about Obama's "worked-my-way-through-college" claims, GO HERE.

CLICK HERE TO SEE - VOTERS REJECT OBAMA'S CALL FOR BILIGUALISM

Conservatives For Obama?

Thomas Sowell, GOP USA.com

A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed-- conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term "Obamacons" to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled "Some Influential Conservatives Spurn GOP and Endorse Obama." In it they quote various conservatives on why they are ready to take a chance on Barack Obama, rather than on John McCain.

What is going on? Read article.

Inside the Obamacans and McCainocrats

John P. Avlon, Politico.com

John Martin just got back from serving a tour with the Navy Reserves in Afghanistan. Entering his third year at St. John's Law School, this National Review reader, former Rush Limbaugh devotee and son of a cop has resumed his volunteer duties as the founder of RepublicansforObama.org.

"What do I like about Obama? He's not divisive," said Martin. "He reaches across the aisle. He's a smart guy, a young guy - someone I can identify with. I'm not happy at all with the Republicans. Our party has chosen to be divisive and demonize the Democrats rather than meeting our nation's challenges. . Our party had control of Congress and the White House, and we dropped the ball."

When a campaign becomes a crusade, crossover votes such as Martin's are a key to victory. In the past, we have seen Eisenhower Democrats and Reagan Democrats, even Republicans for Bill Clinton in 1992. This year, two new terms are entering the political lexicon: Obamacans and McCainocrats. They testify to the way old labels are giving way to new evolutions as the political map edges toward realignment.

A new Gallup poll shows that nearly one-in-four U.S. voters is now a "swing voter" - a higher percentage than at any time in the polarizing 2004 election. Read article.

Wake Up the White Folk

Rev. Lainie Dowell, NMJ.us

Wake up the white folk. The black folk are on the move! The train is coming through to free everybody. Get onboard!

And, while so many folk are down for the celebration of the possibility of new hope and change that is invested in Barack Obama's candidacy, he is openly celebrating America's downfall, and not his own. His personal and academic backgrounds allude to the fact that he may not even be a friend to this nation and its Godly societal ideals.

Ever since it became legal for blacks to vote, the party of Lincoln has not advocated specifically for whites only to participate in the voting process, as they have been erroneously accused of doing.

And, if the Republican Party had tried that in this time, then we know how hard Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and everybody who comes in the name of black leadership would have called for all of them to resign, if that were possible. And, after having succeeded, they would have further called for the Republicans to apologize on their way out. And, then, as they were leaving Washington, D.C., as only the Republicans would have done, then all of those same black leaders would have led the charge to accuse them of being racists, bigots, anti-immigrant, homophobes, haters, liars, anti-American, and traitors worthy of impeachment and hanging. Read article.

It's Not the War, Stupid

Abe Greenwald, Commentary Magazine.com

In February, John McCain said that if he could not convince the American public that the U.S. was winning the Iraq War, he would not make it into the White House. He was exactly wrong.

Believe it or not, McCain is a victim of his own success. He supported the troop surge that turned Iraq from a hopeless disaster into a critical triumph-the same troop surge that's allowed Americans to let Iraq slip from their radar. With the war no longer perceived as a pressing calamity, what care American voters which candidate has the best Iraq plan?

Americans no longer need to be convinced that the U.S. is winning. From a McCain campaign standpoint, progress in Iraq occurred almost too quickly after that February pronouncement. There was no palpable shift in public attitudes, just a stealthy flood of change that suddenly left McCain's invaluable contribution looking irrelevant. And Barack Obama's camp is taking full advantage. Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Rice recently said "Sen. McCain, he's running for commander in chief of Iraq," and Obama "believes we need to focus on the full panoply of threats we face." This disingenuous characterization will gain more traction in voters' minds than the McCain camp's many accurate attempts to expose Obama's misjudgment and indecision on Iraq.

At a certain point in the war (perhaps it was when the number of American troop deaths surpassed the number of those killed on 9/11, or it was the admission of no WMD, or the Abu Ghraib scandal, or it was the umpteenth high-profile suicide bombing, or the umpteenth declaration of "civil war") Americans decided they wanted to move on more than they wanted to win. Read article.

Can McCain Turn his Campaign Around?

Bill Kristol, NY Times.com

Here's what I gather from acquaintances and sources in and around the McCain campaign.

McCain is frustrated. He thinks he can beat Obama (politicians are pretty confident in their own abilities). But he isn't convinced his campaign can beat Obama's campaign. He knows that his three-month general election head start was largely frittered away. He understands that his campaign has failed to develop an overarching message. Above all, McCain is painfully aware that he is being diminished by his own campaign.

This last point is galling. McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller. Obama is a first-term senator with no legislative achievements to speak of. His campaign has helped him seem bigger, more presidential. Read article.

Obama's Hot Air

Nicholas Wapshott, NY Sun.com

Barack Obama's young supporters are discovering that their candidate is hardly the champion of the "new politics" he promised to be. Now that their primary and caucus votes are safely counted, and Hillary Clinton has been dispatched back to the Senate, the Democratic presidential candidate elect is racing toward the political center.

Like a sinking hot air balloonist, he is madly throwing out ballast and baggage to stay aloft in what is turning out to be a far more tightly contested race than he had bargained for.

Until recently, the indicators suggested that all Senator Obama needed to do to become president was to put his feet up and wait until November. President Bush's unpopularity rivals that of Richard Nixon in his carpet biting days.

After nearly eight years, the Republicans are largely discredited and their ideas widely derided. The war in Iraq is unpopular. The war in Afghanistan is not going well. Gas prices are soaring. House prices are plunging. Credit is tight. Home reclamations are rife. The American economy is walking a fine line between recession and gloom.

All this terrible news is good for Mr. Obama. Democratic pundits are agreed that 2008 will be a change election. Mr. Obama is a fine speaker, an attractive family man, and a strong candidate. What could go wrong? Read article.

Obama's cash, spin piling up

Dennis Byrne, Chicago Tribune.com

David Plouffe, manager of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, keeps sending me e-mails asking me to cough up money because the presumptive Democratic nominee's fundraising is, supposedly, as pure as the driven snow. Somehow, my name got on Obama's list of prospective suckers, and for months I've read this song and dance about how he has freed himself from the tentacles of special interests.

This is baloney.

Consider Plouffe's money pitch that followed Obama's recent decision not to accept publicly funded campaign money, which means Obama can spend way more than the $84.1 million campaign spending cap-which, by the way, is something the senator promised never to do.

Said Plouffe: "Opting out of public matching funds was an extremely difficult decision and frankly we are at a disadvantage when it comes to raising money. Unlike [ Sen.] John McCain [the presumptive Republican presidential nominee], this campaign has never accepted donations from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs."

First, Plouffe is being-I'll be charitable-disingenuous when he says that "we are at a disadvantage" in the money game. "Strategists for both parties," reports Bloomberg News service, "say Obama probably will outpace McCain by more than $100 million for the presidential campaign." Obama can spend whatever he will raise; he has already raised more than $266 million, most just for the primaries. Read article.

Race card not a trump for Obama

Anne Davies, Sydney Morning Herald.com

The U.S. Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, heads south this week as part of his campaign to wrest several Southern states from the Republicans and begin dramatically redrawing the electoral map.

This week he's back in North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. Since the primary Senator Obama has also spent considerable time in Virginia, where he has a narrow lead, and made trips to South Carolina as well.

Is it really possible to reclaim the South, a Democratic stronghold until the late 1960s, but now some of the strongest states for the Republicans? Obama's claims that he can pull off this feat are met with scepticism by political analysts. Virginia, just south of Washington, is the most likely.

The north of the state has undergone strong urbanisation as DC's suburbs have crept south, bringing with it middle-class white-collar workers. It has a big university population and a large black population around the capital, Richmond.

But further south, the going gets tougher. To put the task in perspective, George Bush won Georgia with a 17 percentage point margin in 2004; North Carolina by 12 points; Mississippi by 20 points and Alabama by 26 points, thanks to his dominance among white voters. Read article.

Barack Obama Embraces Theocracy

Dr. Paul Kengor, Townhall.com

"George W. Bush is a [EXPLETIVE] theocrat!"

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that over the past eight years. Having written a book on the faith of George W. Bush, I was pummeled by liberals for not conceding that Torquemada had risen from the grave and was now running America from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The left's favorite example of President Bush's looming theocracy was his faith-based initiative. This sent secular liberals over the edge, a bloody bludgeoning of the bright, unmistakable, thousand-foot-high wall separating church and state.

Yet, there was a hidden surprise for liberals: While they doggedly insisted that Bush's new office forged the backbone of an emerging theocratic regime, they neglected to notice that there were politicians on their side of the aisle that liked it.

One such Democrat was Hillary Clinton. This elicited expressions of horror from Hillary advocates in the crowd, as if I had just said that a Hillary presidency would resume the Bush practice of drowning witches in the Potomac.

Well, it turns out that Hillary will not get that chance. Lo and behold, however, Barack Obama promises the same-and then some. On Tuesday, Obama not only commended Bush's pet project but said he would enlarge it; in fact, it would form the "moral center" of his presidency.

Liberals are stunned-they thought Obama was smart, like them. Read article.

Red Alert or Code Pink?

Dick McDonald, DickMcDonald.Blogspot.com

Many times in the history of latter-day America we have ventured into other countries to free others. Just like our Founders signed their death warrant on July 4, 1776 the blood of patriotic Americans has been spilt all over the globe fulfilling Jefferson's last wish to spread freedom throughout the world.

Americans are a peaceful people and would love nothing more than a peaceful world. Those anti-war zealots like Code Pink remind us of that every day. Unfortunately there are still those tyrants in the world who would enslave us and take away our freedom - 1.3 billion Muslims for example; 1.6 billion communists and literally a billion people ruled by tin-horned dictators.

Barack Obama just realized he would not be elected if he was Code Pink's pillow boy and a candidate that would not die for freedom. Therefore he just came down hard on the NYT, Moveon.org, Code Pink and the entire far-left establishment by criticizing the betray us ad on General Petraus as unpatriotic.

Now you can believe anything you want about the street-organizer but he has let it be known that he will be alert to the dictates of Jefferson. He really doesn't have a choice to defend American business interests around the world as they are so pervasive. Read article.

Demand Energy Independence Action Now

Terry Paulson, Townhall.com

Surveys of Americans indicate overwhelming bi-partisan support for increased drilling balanced with investment in innovation. It's time to pass a "No Excuses Energy Act" that supports outer-continental shelf exploration, drilling in ANWR, clean coal production, new refineries, wind and solar power, natural gas, new nuclear power plants and incentives for carbon-free innovation.

Senator Barack Obama seems not overly concerned about $5 gas; it's the price of changing our oil dependence! Obama has called for more taxes and more regulations! He wants a rerun of Jimmy Carter's "windfall" profit taxes on our oil companies. According to the Congressional Research Service, Carter's taxes increased the cost of gas and decreased domestic production by 3-6%. It didn't work then and won't work now.

Obama also wants to require auto manufacturers to produce 50 mpg vehicles. If auto companies had any way to produce millions of cars with that kind of mileage, they'd be flying off their lots! Auto companies are already scrambling to create what Obama wants to require! They don't need more regulations; they need targeted incentives to produce cost-effective, carbon-free energy options that work!

Until all-electric or hydrogen-powered cars can be mass produced at a reasonable price, most low-income Americans will need gas. Read article.

Deconstructing Barry

Andrew Delbanco, TNR.com

"Le style, c'est l'homme," a Frenchman said a long time ago. If style is indeed the man, and the man is on the verge of being nominated for the presidency of the United States, it seems the moment to ask what his style might tell us about his mind and heart.

Many Americans have already decided what they think about this question. Some find in Barack Obama's eloquence the promise that he will be a leader of insight and inspiration. Others distrust his verbal fluency and feel he is nothing more than a smooth-talking huckster. I know discerning people on both sides of the question. And, since there is no evident correlation between eloquence and executive leadership (Washington was an indifferent writer, Lincoln a great one), it may not be possible to know who's right except in retrospect.

Even after his breakout into national prominence, Obama has remained a largely unknown politician whose air of destiny can make him seem distant and opaque. Yet, by listening closely to his language, I think we can learn something about who he really is.

Everyone, pro and con, seems to agree that he is an unusually gifted writer. So gifted, in fact, that the biographer and critic Arnold Rampersad describes himself as "taken aback, even astonished" by the "clever tricks" and "inventions for literary effect" he finds in Obama's books. Read article.

Health Care 2009

Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

Washington is caught up in another one of its health-care spending burlesques, and liberals are belting out their favorite tunes. The GOP wants to "wipe out Medicare as we know it," sings Harry Reid. "The Bush Administration is perfectly happy to have billions of dollars going to insurance companies instead of Medicare beneficiaries," croons Pete Stark.

Republicans should be flogging themselves - for falling into this political trap. Doubly so because the theatrics are a preview of the health-care market if Democrats control both Congress and the White House. If John McCain needs another health-care red alert, here it is.

Every few months, Congress has a fire drill to prevent automatic cuts in the reimbursement fees that doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. The cuts - 10.6% this time around - have been scheduled for years, but Congress has made a habit of buying time with temporary fixes. The last one was in December; this one passed the House 355 to 59. Read article.