McCain Camp Accuses Obama of Playing the Race Card
by FOXNews.com
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday: Barack Obama speaks at a campaign stop in Union, Mo. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., bottom left, listens. (AP Photo)
John McCain’s campaign on Thursday accused Barack Obama of “playing the race card” one day earlier, when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told voters that Republicans will try to scare them by saying he doesn’t look like “all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis issued a statement saying that Obama “played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck” when he told voters Wednesday that McCain will try to scare them into rejecting him. Davis called Obama’s remarks “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
Obama, who will be the first black presidential nominee from a major party, was asked by a reporter Wednesday at a rally in Missouri to respond to growing criticism that he has become presumptuous about the November election and is acting prematurely presidential.
Obama replied that McCain and President Bush have little else to offer voters than scare tactics to maintain the GOP’s hold on the White House.
“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, ‘he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”‘
Obama did not specifically state which distinctions McCain is likely to raise regarding the nation’s forefathers who are immortalized on U.S. currency. McCain has not raised Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, but he has questioned the Illinois senator’s experience.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that Obama was not referring to race.
“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”
But senior McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt told FOX News that Davis responded to the accusation because “a lie unrebutted can become the truth.” He said McCain learned this in 2000, when he was the victim of racial attacks about his daughter. “… you must respond instantaneously and with all you got,” Schmidt said.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor replied to Schmidt’s remarks by denying that Obama’s comment was an accusation against McCain.
“This is a race about big challenges — a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies,” Vietor said. “Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.”
The dispute over Obama’s “dollar bills” remark could reignite a national discussion about the relationship between race and politics.
Obama often makes references to his distinctions as a candidate, such as saying some voters have doubts because he has “a funny name.” At times he refers to his race as well, saying he looks different from any previous candidate, but then adding that the differences are not just about race.
“It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama,” the candidate told supporters at a fundraiser in Springfield, Mo.
Still, the criticism against Obama — including the satirical charge that he is “the biggest celebrity in the world” — may be starting to stick. The Gallup daily tracking poll out Thursday showed that Obama’s 9-point lead over McCain on Sunday, upon his return from a widely praised eight-day trip abroad, has evaporated. The poll now shows the two in a statistical tie, with Obama at 45 percent to McCain’s 44 percent.
During a round of appearances in Missouri, an economically challenged battleground state, Obama worked to link McCain to Bush, saying the Arizona senator would serve the equivalent of a third Bush term if elected.
“That’s a definition of madness, but that’s what John McCain is offering,” Obama said. “He’s offering Bush economic policies and Karl Rove politics.”
He pressed the theme later at a rain-soaked barbecue in Union, Mo.
“They’re going to say I’m a risky guy,” Obama said. “What they’re going to argue is I’m too risky. The real risk is that we miss the moment, that we do not do what’s needed because we’re afraid.”
FOX News’ James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
