Palin Runs with Biden's Test Warning [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Sarah Palin in Reno today, via the campaign:
Two weeks from today, Americans will be asked to cast their vote for the next president of the United States. There's no time to wait. Let's get right to it.
Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we'll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words – that there were "at least four or five scenarios" that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!
He didn't specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let's review the Obama foreign policy agenda.
Our opponent wants to sit down with the world's worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to "wipe Israel off the map." Let's call that crisis scenario number one.
Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We'll call that scenario number two.
He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He's voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.
After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.
But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis scenario number five.
The real problem is that these warnings from Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama. It wasn't so long ago that he said Barack Obama wasn't up to the job, and that, quote, "the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."
The same Joe Biden said he would be honored to run on the ticket with John McCain because, quote, "the country would be better off." And here we have some common ground. I want a president who spent 22 years in uniform defending our country. I want a president who isn't afraid to use the word "victory" when he talks about the wars we are fighting. I want a president who's ready on Day One. I want a president with the experience and the judgment and the wisdom to meet the next international crisis – or better yet to avoid it. I want John McCain as our commander-in-chief.
10/21 12:47 PM
Re:But Why Keep Talking to Him? [Andy McCarthy]
Victor, respectfully, the Ayers/Obama continued association by phone and email is mystifiying only if one assumes that Ayers's vile 9/11 comments mark the revelation of an Ayers different from the one Obama knew for the many preceding years. There is not a scintilla of evidence that such a thing could be true.
Ayers has never pretended to be anything other than what he is: a revolutionary Leftist, who described himself as "a radical, small 'c' communist" in 1995 — the very time when Obama started formally partnering with him on education reform, humping Ayers's radical 1997 book, appearing on panels with Ayers, joining with him to fund the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and the like. He did not become proud and creepy after 9/11. He is what he is and has ever been.
That is to say, the continued association is easily explained for anyone willing to look at the facts. The post 9/11 Ayers was exactly the same guy as the pre-9/11 Ayers. That's what drew Obama to him in the first place. The media and our esteemed commentariat choose not to look at the facts — after all, Obama is such a fine writer and has such intellectual rigor. So we have the usual dismissal or complex rationalizations of something that is obvious and simple: Obama shares Ayers's Leftist politics. Whatever distance Obama has imposed in the last couple of years is strictly a function of his electoral ambitions.
Characteristically, VDH is getting to the heart of the matter. What is sadly remarkable is how many others are prepared to draw sweeping, negative inferences about Sarah Palin because of her accent, yet, when it comes to Obama, they avert their eyes from the unmistakeable evidence staring them right in the face.
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