It what appears to be either a rookie mistake or panicky overkill, lawyers for the Obama campaign have been using thuggish bullying tactics to suppress free speech during the campaign.
The ad that has caused all the hysteria can be seen here and many other places, since we all know once an attempt is made to ban something, everybody wants to see it.
The ad is produced by a 501(c)4 entity called “American Issues Project” and is about Obama’s connection with terrorist Bill Ayers. Obama does not refute the charges in the ad because he can’t—they are true, but instead has threatened the TV stations that dared to run the ad, issued a counter-ad which doesn’t answer the charges and sent a complaint to the Department of Justice demanding the backers of the ad be investigated and prosecuted. Democrats always howl about Bush’s “jack-booted thugs”, but it seems a President Obama would be more than willing to criminalize all criticism of him.
Here’s a statement from the “American Issues Project”:
“The Obama campaign knows it can’t argue the facts of the link between Obama and Ayers, so it is instead resorting to a desperate campaign of intimidation and legal threats. The scary queston this raises is if Barack Obama demonstrates this little regard for free speech from his opponents during the campaign, what could the American people expect from him as a president? The tremendous amount of time, money and effort the campaign is expending to run its own ads on the Ayers controversy and dispatch its hired guns all over the country—during the Democratic convention—speaks to the fear they must have that this issue is resonating with American voters.”
Either that or the fear of “Swift-boating” has reached a pathological level with Democrats. Kerry didn’t lose because of the Swift Boat ads, he lost because he’s John Kerry.
But what I’m not understanding is why Obama hasn’t thrown Ayers under the bus along with all the others who have become inconvenient to his rise to power. What does Ayers have on him that makes him afraid? I’m thinking of the old saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. The University of Illinois has recently opened the files on the Ayers/Obama Annenberg Challenge project on education—they were working together on this as recently as ’01, so maybe something will surface, though I’m sure any damaging information has been scrubbed during the time the U of I put a lock on access.
I can’t imagine any good coming out of this show of force and intimidation by the Obama campaign—does he really want to open the door for the GOP to demand “investigation and prosecution” of all the pro-Obama/anti-McCain ads?
I can’t see how this helps Obama—it’s either his experience or panic that has caused this overkill—and neither makes him look good.
QC Examiner 