The biggest blunder of the campaign—by far
Posted on 11.06.08 by dancurry @ 8:30 pm

When the history of this campaign is written, it should include a massive mistake by the Hillary Clinton team that probably cost her the presidency: Her negative research team failed to find the Rev. Jeremiah Wright tape.

ABC News was first to air the infamous tape of parts of Wright’s sermons on March 12—after the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses and several other key contests. By then, Barack Obama had a strong hold on the nomination. Once the tape aired, Obama’s poll numbers dropped and he struggled the rest of the primary season, barely limping home the nominee.

Had the Clinton team found the tape and dropped it at a strategic point during those early contests, Obama would have been toast. There’s really not much question of this.

The haunting part of this from the Clinton perspective is that the sermon tapes were available online and at Wright’s church. A basic job of negative research would have found them.

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

In the negative research business, this is malpractice. The Obama campaign also screwed up by not finding the tape in advance and removing it from the church and internet.

This was the unpublicized turning point of the campaign.

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McCain has a shot at Pennsylvania
Posted on 11.02.08 by dancurry @ 2:49 pm

Columnist Selena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review believes John McCain can win Pennsylvania. Polls have showed him inching to within several percentage points of Barack Obama.

“This race is still not a slam-dunk for Barack Obama,” says Pennsylvania Democrat Mark Singel, a former lieutenant governor and acting governor.

Pennsylvania voters move pretty dramatically in the very last days of the campaign, he says.

I’m surprised Obama is not here on Sunday. Instead, he’s in Ohio. If there’s a late tightening in the race, McCain will win Ohio. But Pennsylvania is tougher for Republicans. Without it, McCain probably can’t be president.

“In an odd way, many liberals are tone-deaf about normal people, who worship God, country, sports and their communities and don’t care all that much about politics,” says former Villanova political scientist Bob Maranto.

Maranto says what’s causing Pennsylvania voters to give Obama a second look goes beyond Obama’s “share the wealth” notion: “They are suspicious of him and his Ivy League buddies who have never run anything in their lives (but) that now want to run the country.”

He adds that “it is all in the arrogance.”

That exactly describes the Reagan Democrats I grew up with in Missouri. They are not voting against Obama because they are racist. They are voting against him because of his elitism and arrogance.

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“A baboon-like level of discourse”
Posted on 10.26.08 by dancurry @ 5:24 pm

The Palin smear factory continues working overtime, notes Power Line.

I don’t think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin. Left-winger Andrew Sullivan gleefully posted a particularly disgusting example of the phenomenon today; it’s a YouTube video titled “Red, White and MILF.” Watch it only if you have a strong stomach. If you don’t know what “MILF” means–I’m sure most of our readers don’t–Google it.

I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left’s decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The vileness of much of what passes for political “argument” on the Left has to be seen to be believed. The worst impulses of human nature have been not just unleashed, but rewarded. If you haven’t looked at web sites like Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, you have no idea what the phrase “gutter politics” really means.

Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin. It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan’s video, would look like. Frankly, I can’t imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes–the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

The sad part is that much of the MSM picks up its news tips from Sullivan.

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Pravda in America
Posted on 10.23.08 by dancurry @ 7:05 pm

Newt Gingrich unloads on the news media:

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, I think the elite media’s attack on Governor Palin again and again has been factually wrong, intellectually dishonest, totally biased, worthy of the Polish state news media attacking Lech Walesa back in the 1980s. I mean, this is a kind of deliberate, vicious, dishonest, total distortion of who Governor Palin is, including, by the way, the “Saturday Night Live” skits, some of which I think were slander and were worthy of a lawsuit.

And I think that the American people should realize that the elite media on the left is so desperate to elect Barack Obama that the view they’re giving you of Governor Palin is fundamentally a falsehood. And the one you saw from CNN is so outrageous that they owe her an absolute apology. But frankly, Katie Couric misquoted Henry Kissinger. Earlier than that, ABC News misquoted the Bush doctrine. Again and again, you’ve seen elite reporters do things that were false in order to try to make Governor Palin look bad.

While the MSM lies, the public is noticing.

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AP and its transparent priorities
Posted on 10.22.08 by dancurry @ 9:23 am

Associated Press, which refuses to even mention that the Rezko-Obama house sale is under federal scrutiny, devoted massive resources to this “blockbuster.”

Who says journalists don’t investigate any more?  The AP is getting to the bottom of Sarah Palin’s children traveling with her on state business.  No news yet on Barack Obama’s dealings with Rezko or Ayers, or how his wife nearly tripled her six figure income  at a hospital when became a US Senator and then got earmarks for it.  But first things first, I’m sure.

The AP report has three names in the byline: Brett J. Blackledge, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo.  From the story’s timeline, the AP had requested her expense reports prior to August 6.  Brett, Adam and Matt must have been part of that army of lawyers and journalists who descended on Wasilla within days of McCain announcing Sarah as his VP pick.

Their story is comprehensive, if you go by word count.  My computer says its over 1,400 words.  If you can wade through the article, they seem to describe every single trip any of Sarah’s kids took with her — juicy stuff.  In all, we’re talking $21,012.  Twenty one thousand dollars!  Michelle Obama would have to do community outreach for three or four weeks to haul in that much cash.

Here are the resources AP expended to get a story that alleges spending that almost certainly is legal.

Let’s see, their investigation started before August 6. Their story ran October 21. Three reporters, 11 weeks? That’s over 1300 man-hours plus air-fare, lodging and per diem, if they were full time on that. How much did that cost? Over $21,012? (I easily estimate three times that, but maybe they weren’t all full time.)

And now that AP is done with that big probe?

In the meantime, it’s nice to know that Brett, Adam and Matt are now getting freed up from that intensive dive into the darkest secrets of Sarah’s past so they can get back to the Rezko, Ayers, wife’s job investigations thingies they must have been pulled from temporarily.

I’m sure that’s coming next. As in next year or next decade.

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Palin defeats pundits again
Posted on 10.03.08 by dancurry @ 7:41 am

After 10 days of ridicule from the liberal high choir, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin showed once again they are not to be trusted as reliable brokers of information. The previous 10 days of reporting and commentary simply did not square with her superb debate performance.

Palin outdebated the three other members of the national ticket, all members of the world’s most famous debating club, the U.S. Senate.

Morning shows conducted by the MSM are grudgingly reporting Palin “did well.” They are rationalizing this by saying it doesn’t matter, it is a one-day story, she was reciting talking points, she didn’t answer questions, etc. They are reciting dubious “snap polls” without describing the methodology of those notoriously unreliable surveys. The same pundits who said Barack Obama won his debate over John McCain on style and tone and not substance are proclaiming that Biden won this one on substance. Whatever.

The media elite like to say Barack Obama and Joe Biden have “nimble minds” but all I’m hearing from the Democratic duo is the same talking point: John McCain is another George W. Bush. I guess when liberal politicians repeat talking points endlessly that’s called strategy and when a conservative does it, it’s called “programmed” or “recitation.”

What I saw last night was a confident communicator who was effective at times in piercing the Obama-Biden narrative. She got off the best lines of the night, was the most likable, and by far the most authentic. Biden talks about the middle class in a wooden, phony way. Palin is the middle class. If she stays on the national political scene, she is a deadly threat to Democrats and thus will continue to be savaged by that party’s surrogate partner, the MSM.

Biden made a string of false and untrue statements last night, including misstating the U.S. Constitution. Palin made far fewer mistakes. But don’t expect to see the MSM dwell on the mistake gap—it doesn’t fit the narrative. Remember, Palin is the dumb one.

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The video that should sink Obama
Posted on 09.27.08 by dancurry @ 12:48 pm

The angle the MSM (D-Obama) refuses to cover.

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Debatable pandering
Posted on 09.27.08 by dancurry @ 10:38 am

I thought John McCain decisively defeated Barack Obama last night on substance. He schooled Obama on foreign policy and managed to steer the economy argument to earmarks and spending—his turf. If the MSM (D-Obama) was balanced, it would be pummeling Obama today for his Kissinger gaffe. My guess is it will barely touch it.

On style, of course, Obama is hard to match. In reality, when you dice his words and substance, he’s the best disguised empty suit we’ve ever seen in national politics. He slides and dissembles gracefully and almost invisibly. Two times, however, I thought he slipped up.

When Obama tried to match a story McCain told about a fallen soldier and the bracelet he wears, he had to look down to see the name of the soldier and verbally stumbled, briefly. If you are going to wear a soldier’s bracelet, you better have the story down stone cold or it looks like your symbol is a hollow pander.

Another way Obama panders (and many other politicians) is constant use of the word “folks.” I always thought Obama’s use was particularly incongruous because in the liberal elite circles he hangs, I’m not convinced the “folks” are a big concern. But Obama reflexively uses the term of endearment, even when referring to terrorists.

And the point that I originally made is that we took our eye off Afghanistan, we took our eye off the folks who perpetrated 9/11, they are still sending out videotapes and Senator McCain, nobody is talking about defeat in Iraq, but I have to say we are having enormous problems in Afghanistan because of that decision.

Obama doesn’t have to pander to terrorists—I’m sure they already are hoping he wins.

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The maverick ticket
Posted on 08.29.08 by dancurry @ 9:04 am

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a very risky pick as vice president. As a first-term governor, it brings the issue of experience front and center. But the news media, in the first few minutes of trying to digest this, are missing the point.

Palin has built her reputation as a gutsy reformer. She stood up against her own party’s corruption in Alaska.

John McCain’s strategists probably believed that the experience argument against Obama is relevant, but ultimately out of their hands. In other words, if Obama performed well in the debates and the public viewed him as qualified for president, the argument is negated.

Reform, on the other hand, is something that Obama can’t claim. He has the festering Rezko house deal and did nothing about corruption in his own state.

McCain and Palin have bucked their own party. They are truly independent. Obama and Biden are not. They are boilerplate Democrats with no credible record of reform.

Suddenly, the change ticket changed to McCain-Palin.

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The symphony that wasn’t
Posted on 08.29.08 by dancurry @ 7:21 am

Pundits both left and even some from the right were effusive in their praise of Barack Obama’s speech last night. Once again, Obama, the magician, fooled them.

This speech wasn’t even close to great as a piece of art. It was a mismash of several different styles—stump speech, soaring rhetoric, churlish attacks, defensive pre-emption. Much has been made about Obama writing his own speeches. If you look closely at the text, it appears that Obama’s language was invaded by insertion of the attacks and pre-emption.

Read the text and then read George W. Bush’s 2000 acceptance speech. Putting aside partisan feelings, the Obama speech is not even close to GWB’s as a piece of writing.

The tactics of Obama’s speech may have been clever, we’ll see. But a symphony it wasn’t.

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Reverse Spin allows a former newspaper reporter, editor, government spokesman and long ago JFK Democrat turned Republican strategist to explain the weird and twisted things that are written and said every day...in Illinois...and across the country. Dan Curry can be reached at danieldcurry at gmail dot com. The opinions expressed here are correct and not always those of clients of my public affairs consulting company, Curry Public Strategies, Inc.

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