Obama had greater role on liberal survey

[TacticalPeek]

Source: Politico

Obama had greater role on liberal survey

By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 3/31/08 4:35 AM EST


During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9269.html

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New Politics = Old Politics

[Zueda]

1. Here's the Obama camp's response:

“Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires — a staffer did — and there are several answers that didn't reflect his views then or now,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign, said in an e-mailed statement. “He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire at the meeting, but that doesn't change the fact that some answers didn't reflect his views. His 11 years in public office do.”

[tidy_bowl]

2. Sorry.....

.....it just doesn't make sense.

[TacticalPeek]

3. Weak.

He needs to be up front and not dance around so much, like he did/does with Rev Wright. These evasions that sidestep the point may come back to haunt him if he makes it to the general. The R tv ads won't look at all like the sweetheart news coverage he gets, and he is giving them ammo wholesale.

[uberblonde]

4. What, you're not ridiculing him or calling for his head?

Why the double standard, I wonder?

[Zueda]

5. This is not evasion..

It's just the truth.

I guess the truth just isn't good enough for you. I suppose you would rather see him make shit up like Hillary does.

[elocs]

6. And Hillary isn't giving them ammo wholesale? Give me a break!

Her public assertion that she and McCain have the experience the be Commander in Chief, but all Obama has is a speech, that's not ammo. One thing that would be ammo came from her own mouth, 4 separate times, was how she was in danger of sniper fire when it was exposed as being a lie. How would that little piece of personal puffery of being in danger (taking her daughter, too) play against McCain who is a certified war hero? In her scorched earth policy to do anything and everything to defeat Obama, if Clinton were to somehow win the nomination the list of things she has said and done that will come back to haunt her would be very long.

[Igel]

11. So what they're saying is that Obama had the form

purporting to present his views in his hands during a meeting. He wrote on it.

So, did he bother to read it? Or wasn't he curious enough to do that much? I wouldn't have been able to avoid giving it a quick review.

If he read it, did he think that the views presented might not reflect what his views were? Or didn't he care that his views were misrepresented? Perhaps he thought that the answers were what his views needed to be at the time, without regard as to what his views might later need to have always been?

Perhaps he just didn't think it mattered what was said, anything to dispose of an irritation. But that would show arrogance that he mustn't have, or at least show.

None of these are good inferences, although they're all possible. What's troubling is the lack of good inferences.

Even in the most high-powered of meetings, there are moments when nothing's happening.

[high density]

7. So one questionnaire is the say all and end all of Obama info?

For one thing, I'm pretty sure every candidate has some of these questionnaires in their closets that they may not want advertised to the world.

Not to mention that positions change over a decade. Republicans like to call it "flip flop" but I consider it progress. I hold different views on some things than I did in 1996 and I'm sure Obama does as well. It's like finding a poll from late September 2001 on people's opinion on Bushco and then declaring that it still holds true today. Times change and people change.

[bemildred]

8. So last week was Rev Wright, this week is going to be some stupid list of questions? nt

[KittyWampus]

15. Hillary already trotted this out months ago. That's how little they've got on Obama

[nxylas]

9. I think this is the wrong site...

...to try and scare people with "ZOMG he's a LIBRUL!!!!11oneone".

[juno jones]

10. There's something wrong with him being liberal? n/t

[Igel]

13. No.

But we keep hearing how triangulation is an ultimate evil. How authenticity and character, the correct moral choices, matter.

So has Obama been triangulating, presenting himself as moderate in order to get votes, at the risk of being unauthentic? Have his choices been not driven by character and, above all, transparent, but merely there to advance his position without regard to what he actually believes?

Then the difference between him and HRC is experience: She has more bad experience in her 7 years Senate than he has in his 11 years of public service. Oh. Wait. Then we *have* to count her "triangulating" when she was first lady.

Do first ladies triangulate?

[KittyWampus]

12. who gives a crap about a 12 year old questionnaire? And this is old, recycled Hillary crap

as her pathetic campaign tries to equate something this irrelevant to lying about sniper fire in Bosnia or bringing peace to Ireland.

[JayFredMuggs]

14. This is a duplicate thread.

How many duplicate threads on the same topic is enough for one morning?

Another tempest in a teapot big exaggeration to say that Obama has LIED as well and as much as Hillary. IMO

The article is VERY CLEAR, it does NOT indicate Obama himself lied or even "mis-spoke" as in Hillary's remembrance on Bosnia, just ten years ago. Was she Hallucinating on drugs to remember Bosnia that way?

To quote from the OP's article "his aides said he 'never saw or approved'” the questionnaire." His aides were perhaps wrong.

Contrast that to what bold faced LIES we have all heard out of Hillary Rodham Clinton's own mouth.

[angie_love]

16. I want a liberal in the whitehouse, isn't that a good thing...again why the fuck is liberal a dirty

word. Some of you are really embarressing, do you not want a liberal to be elected? If you want a conservative go to the repugs. Damn!!

[TacticalPeek]

17. Notice how many posts try to change the focus from lying and evasion to being 'liberal'.

Continue kicking dirt over little problems and they grow a crop of big honking problems.

It's not the sexy liberal positions, it's the dishonesty.