ohn LeBoutillier
Barack Obama’s selection of long-time Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate was a huge political mistake.
Why? Because Biden gives Obama almost nothing to help him in the one and only one thing they ought to be thinking about: accumulating 270 Electoral votes on Nov. 4. Biden does not give them a state that they would not have already had. Thus he is like so many other recent, and failed, Democrat veep picks: Lloyd Bentsen, Geraldine Ferraro, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. None of these selections helped their ticket gather those 270 electoral votes or even accomplished the converse: kept their GOP opponents from getting to that magic number.
Evan Bayh would have automatically made Indiana, a traditional GOP lock, a competitive state and hurt McCain by stretching and stressing his limited campaign budget. Mark Warner or Jim Webb would similarly vault Virginia, a longtime GOP bastion, into the undecided column.
Bill Richardson would have guaranteed New Mexico for Obama and maybe locked up Nevada and Colorado, too. But Joe Biden’s Delaware is a solid Democratic state anyway.
The sycophants in the media were downright disgraceful as everyone inside the D.C. Beltway rushed forward to praise Biden. Where is the objectivity? Where is the balance? Where are stories about his alleged law school plagiarism? Where is a recounting of the brutal way he assaulted Judge Clarence Thomas?
Instead we are told how this life-long political hack is the Third Coming (the second is Obama himself). The fawning by the MSNBC talking heads was unbelievable.
How about some objectivity? How about the fact that, as a Catholic, he is pro-choice? No one mentioned that. They did say that he is a Catholic and thus will help Obama in heavily Catholic states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. Oh, really? Do all Catholics go against Church doctrine?
Why is it that Biden, after years of campaigning and national TV appearances, could not get even 1 percent of the vote in this year’s Iowa caucuses?
Why is that the Beltway media love him so much, but the voters in Iowa didn’t buy his act one bit?
This just points out the incestuous relationship between the media and the people they cover; they trade leaks for access and puffery for access. What a disgrace.
Biden does help flesh out the weaknesses in Obama’s (thin or nonexistent) resume. He has D.C. experience and foreign policy knowledge. And he will be an aggressive attack dog against Mccain and a Bush third term (the Obama fall campaign theme). But he seems to be all talk.
Obama may regret this selection, not because Biden will do badly, but because someone else could have helped him get to that magic 270.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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Would Barack Obama be likely to fulfill his campaign promises of hope and change if he were elected President?
Judged by his previous achievements the answer would have to be a resounding ‘no’.
When faced with past failures he has always tried to obscure them, and if or when that was not possible he has blamed others.
The many "successes" that he has claimed in campaign speeches were often due to the work of others but he always took but never gave credit for them.
He has steadfastly refused to answer questions relating to his days at Harvard and such omissions are a continually recurring and worrying theme.
He was appointed ‘President of the Law Review’ which is something that should not be minimalized but whilst holding the post he published none of his own work and once again there is no paper trail and this pattern predates his time at Harvard.
He majored in political science at Columbia University but when asked for his senior thesis he claimed to have lost it. Its subject was the Kennedy-Khrushchev conference and the diplomatic history between America and the Soviets and it later came to light that he was wrong about all its crucial elements.
So how are we to judge him when there are no written records, no signed legal papers, no research papers that were authored or co-authored by him?
A search of the ‘HeinOnline’ database of law journals turns up nothing that can be credited to Obama in any law review anywhere or at any time.
In spite of an apparent eleven-year teaching career in constitutional law at a top law school there is not one single article, published talk, book review, or comment of any kind that bears the name ‘Barack Obama’.
He misjudged the constitutionality of Washington D.C.'s gun control law which is somewhat surprising given his legal background. He believed the law to be constitutional and supported it but The Supreme Court disagreed and threw out the ban. Obama then sought to distance himself from his earlier opinion and blamed an "unnamed aide" for stating that he believed that DC ban was constitutional.
Obama misinterpreted the "Born Alive" bill that came before the Illinois State Senate when he served there. The legislation was intended to address the issue of babies who were born during abortion procedures. The legislation was clear and afforded babies that were born during an abortion the protection of the law and stated that they should be treated like any other baby that was born alive and prematurely. Obama spoke out against the bill saying it would not pass "constitutional muster" but three years later, in his book ‘The Audacity of Hope’, he wrote that it would have overturned Roe v. Wade.
That he was so completely wrong is more than a little disappointing for a man who prides himself on being a constitutional expert.
He told the Teamsters union that he would end the federal oversight of the union in exchange for their electoral support which is an unusual commitment to have made given that union anti-corruption efforts have until now always been treated as a legal matter and left to the Justice Department.
Was Barack Obama willing to lift this monitoring which is intended to prevent crime in order to gain votes?
When it comes to the selection of Supreme Court nominees Obama disagreed with fellow Democrats over the selection of Justices Roberts and Alito and voted against their confirmation in spite of their excellent legal credentials. He would apparently use an entirely different yardstick to the tried and tested one and stated, “We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges”.
“Can or should we be asked to follow a person that leaves no footprints?”.
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