The attacks on Barack Obama have begun. The Republicans are questioning his patriotism, and CNN immediately runs a poll asking if he’s patriotic enough to be president (sign a protest letter here). No word so far on whether they’ll poll on whether McCain is too dishonest to be president. Then again, even McCain can’t hope to come close to the incumbent, so apparently no level of dishonesty is disqualifying.
It is depressing that Clinton seems to be blazing a trail for the Republicans to follow. Attacking your opponent on policy issues, even if you distort their positions a bit, is part of the game. Injecting racism is a bit different. Recently one of Hillary’s surrogates said she couldn’t see anything wrong with distributing pictures of Obama in native African dress because ” I have no shame or no problem with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing, in the clothing of his country.” Barack Obama is an American. The Republican party will do everything it can to paint him as a foreigner, and Hillary and her people are doing everything they can to legitimize that line of attack.
Now we will see if Obama can deal with this sort of thing. If he reacts passively, like Kerry did, we are likely to see a re-run of 2004. He needn’t go after Hillary, he can go after the media, like the Republicans would do. The CNN poll would be as good a place to start as any.
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