I note with some amusement, our fellow SwampStomper, Gaius over at Blue Crab: [1]
I have not bothered to comment on that picture of Barack Obama wearing the garb of a Somali elder that was circulated over the weekend. I’m glad I didn’t since Drudge is now reporting [2] that the picture was circulated by Clinton staffers in what appears to be a really nasty – and completely ineffective – smear attempt.
With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama.
The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya.
The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.
“Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?” questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on the circulation of the Obama/Somali photo: “On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world.”
Politicians have a long history of dressing up in local garb for a photo opportunity. Obama is no different. But the sheer sleaze factor of where this picture appears to have come from should make people wonder. How much of the vast conspiracy that Hillary Clinton complains about traces back to her own operatives?
[1]Well, of course the thing would be damaging to the Clinton camp… it’s a risky play. Then again, from HRC’s perspective, it’s time for risky plays.
However that may be, though, let’s examine the nature of what’s being implied by the picture’s release. What is to fear that is represented in this picture? Racial overtones? Most likely. But wait a tick; these are Democrats we’re talking about that Hillary Clinton is supposedly trying to frighten. They can’t be racist, can they?
Revealing as that is, what else is being implied, by this picture’s release? That he might have loyalties outside these United States? Certainly, that would be a claim worth examination, I’d think.
Look, gang, whatever else RC and her gang are, they’re not stupid. They woldn’t be playing this card, if they didn’t understand the effect it would have. The picture’s release is also intended, it seems clear, to get an emotional response going. certainly, emotion is a major part of fear.
The response of Obama nd his people, too, strikes me as one of fear-mongering, and emotional invocation. The entire campaign of both Obama and HRC is centered on emotion, rather than fact, as I have been saying here for a long time. Obama’s people react the way they do because they understand that this photo will effect emotion if they don’t respond correctly, and in a lot of cases, even when they DO respond.
At the bottom line, here is that what we’re dealing with in both Clinton and Obama, is what I’ve been saying all along; these are both slick Chicago pols, who only care about obtaining power, and really don’t give a damn about the piles of monkey feces they keep hurling at each other.
I hasten to add that not all fears are unjustified. The voters who ahve been treated to repeated charges in both directions of “fear mongering” know this on an instinctive, if not a logical level. Certaily, the Dems have been tossing this charge out at President Bush over Iraq. At some point, however, the charge of ‘fear mongering’ loses it’s usefulness.
For our part, you and I, if we were to actually listen to them, both Obama and Clinton would leave us quite fearful indeed.. and this exchange of theirs is only part of the genesis of that fear.