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Sunday, October 19, 2008
Dazzling daylight between Webb & Obama on guns and other policies
The below-mentioned Matt Bai piece in the NYT Sunday Magazine also produced a couple of priceless quotes, reproduced in my guest-post at HughHewitt.com, that I hope are quoted and emailed to every gun-owner, conservative, and moderate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]
(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)
I couldn't resist taking the opportunity in a post earlier this evening to mock the beginning of Matt Bai's article in Sunday's NYT Magazine about Barack Obama's attempts to lure working-class voters because Sen. Obama's attempts to explain his "Bittergate" comments are just so ridiculous.
I'd think more of Obama if he just admitted to us all that he'd screwed up by telling those folks in San Francisco the truth about what he really thinks, rather than by continuing to insult our intelligence. Anyone who thinks — as Sen. Obama was trying to persuade Bai and Bai's readers — that Obama really had been trying to convert his listeners in San Francisco, so that they too would embrace (in between sips of wine) the bitter people of flyover country who cling to guns and religion, is a likely buyer for bridges (be it that Golden Gate one or the equally famous one in Brooklyn).
But Bai is a perceptive fellow, and his article is a good read by NYT standards, which is to say that he only bumps into the edge of the Obama tank about every third or fourth paragraph. In particular, I commend these paragraphs, unfortunately buried about three-fourths of the way down, to every voter in the Commonwealth of Virginia (bold-face mine):
A week after Obama visited Lebanon and Norfolk, [Virginia,] I went to see Jim Webb in his Capitol Hill office. Obama’s campaign considers Webb, a war hero and former Republican, to be one of its most critical validators all over Virginia, specifically because he appeals to white men who are skeptical of Democrats in general. In fact, Webb’s Scots-Irish family hails from coal country. Not long after he entered the Senate, he became embroiled in a mini-controversy when an aide accidentally carried one of Webb’s favorite guns onto the Capitol grounds.
I was surprised, then, when Webb told me that while he was enthusiastic about Obama and would campaign for him, he did not intend to vouch for him on social issues. “I believe that Barack Obama has the temperament and the intellect and the ideas to be president,” Webb said. “But I don’t talk about his positions, and I don’t defend his positions.” When I commented that Webb wasn’t where Obama was on gun rights (Obama favors what he calls some “common sense” restrictions), Webb cut me off. “No, he’s not where I am on guns,” he said pointedly. It occurred to me that this was probably the kind of validation Obama could do without. (Webb appears to have softened his stance. A few weeks later, he decided to tape an ad promising voters in southwestern Virginia that Obama would not, in fact, confiscate their guns.)
It seems that Sen. Webb also had an unguarded moment of truth-telling. Props to Bai for not subjecting it to the normal MSM nacht-und-nebel routine that they use on most statements and events that are unflattering to The One.
Posted by Beldar at 01:46 AM in 2008 Election, Mainstream Media, Obama, Politics (2008) | Permalink
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