Ayers' brother charges Clinton camp with "McCarthyism"

[Adelante]

And so do I.

Ayers' brother charges Clinton camp with 'McCarthyism'

BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter/[e-mail]

Bill Ayers' brother, Rick Ayers, is lashing out at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of "McCarthyism" for making an issue of rival Barack Obama's links to Chicago professor Bill Ayers during this week's Democratic presidential debate.

"The fact that she would drag up this pathetic red herring about Obama's alleged ties to so-called terrorist Bill Ayers (my brother!) brings her right down to the level of Fox News and the National Enquirer," blogged Rick Ayers, a California high school teacher and author.

"This is the most base version of McCarthyism," he wrote. "Obama should have taken a page from Joseph Welch when he confronted the red-baiting senator during the Army-McCarthy hearings. He should have said, 'Senator Clinton, are you really going to go there? Do you have no shame?'"

Clinton raised the relationship as a potential general election sore spot for Obama should he defeat her.

Obama then downplayed his ties to Bill Ayers, who spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s as a member of the Weather Underground, which protested the Vietnam War by bombing government buildings.

Obama — who lives near Bill Ayers, received a $200 campaign donation from him in 2001 and served with him for three years on a not-for-profit's board — also said he "detested" the Weather Underground's acts. Still, Clinton slammed Obama for not severing all ties with Bill Ayers.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/904015,CST-NWS-ayers19.article

[marylanddem]

1. Good for Rick Ayers - it IS McCarthyism

[WillyToad]

5. Obama is a red menace?

McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s.

Grow a skin, this ain't a coronation.

[roguevalley]

34. hey, 48 posts, the action of blaming by association and smearing

based on politics is McCarthyism. Thanks for the history lesson, which I don't need because I was there at the time, but you need to rethink what McCarthyism, the noun, has come to mean. And yes, this is McCarthyism. And yes, this isn't a coronation, which is why Clinton is losing. She was going to become the next queen of America and people are rejecting it. By the way, grow a skin if you decide to reply.

[WillyToad]

2. I almost spit out my coffee when I saw this post...

Note the silence of Obama supporters on this one......

:rofl:

[union_maid]

3. What silence?

It is McCarthyism. That's exactly what McCarthyism was all about.

[Adelante]

4. Excuse me?

[rurallib]

14. mccartyism = guilt by association

and now for the first time I say "Gobama!"

[Adelante]

18. Call it red-baiting

That's what it is.

[Hepburn]

29. Heya!

Nice to have you on board! :hi:

[marylanddem]

6. This Obama supporter will never shut up

but welcome to DU anyway, WillyToad, whoever you are...

[Cassandra]

7. Are we all required to pile on in the first 10 minutes?

Obama has no real or significant association with Ayers except in his role as an educator. It is McCarthyism to suggest that Ayers' Weatherman background affects Obama at all.

[OneDemsConscience]

9. Absolutely

I'm disappointed to be saying this.....but Clinton's desparate and dishonest tactics have turned me from a lukewarm to an enthusiastic Obama supporter. Clinton is confirming the right-wing spin that she is hopelessly blinded by ambition.

[Hepburn]

31. Excellent statement on this. n/t

[Cooley Hurd]

22. Silence? Well, how about this:

YEEEARGH! GOBAMA!!!

[Zachstar]

27. LOL! win!!

[noel711]

8. Silence? I'm not shuttin' up about this crap....

And to quote the Bible...

If we were silent, "..even the stones would shout out.."

[babylonsister]

10. He's not alone:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x353661

Old Lessons For Obama

snip//

Lesson Two: Resort to McCarthyism.

Discredit your opponent by associating him or her with someone who is strongly disliked or deemed disreputable.

It matters not that your opponent neither shares nor is influenced by that person's ideas or behavior. The association, if presented skillfully and persistently, may be enough to create doubt about the opponent.

Case in point: Link Obama with controversial figures to call into question his fitness for the presidency. Sen. Joe McCarthy did it by impugning the patriotism of innocent Americans. It worked for him -- for a while.

Guilt by association is being tried again.

more...

[Stephanie]

11. Wasn't Hillary a 60s radical herself?

IIRC, she was an activist at that time.

[marylanddem]

12. If she fancied herself a 60's radical, she was mistaken

It's hard for me to imagine such a quick transformation of a Goldwater Girl - unless that's what it took to climb into the sack with Bill. Though even Bill was FAR from a 60's radical come to think of it...

Wait a minute, though - she did wear granny glasses...

[Hepburn]

33. I bet she even ironed her hair and went bra-less!

:rofl: Oooooooh, and the biggie? I bet she wore tie-dye!

Yep, that's what it was all about. Wonder if she inhaled? :shrug:

[Adelante]

13. A connection to COMMIES and BLACK PANTHERS

Hillary Clinton's Radical Summer
A Season of Love and Leftists

By JOSH GERSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 26, 2007


OAKLAND, Calif. — In a life marked largely by political caution, one entry on Senator Clinton's résumé stands out: her clerkship in 1971 at one of America's most radical law firms, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.

One partner at the firm, Doris Walker, was a Communist Party member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America's most "dangerously subversive" lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panthers.

To this day, Mrs. Clinton's decision to work at the unabashedly left-wing firm is surprising, even shocking, to some of her former colleagues there and to those supporting her bid for the presidency. To the former first lady's enemies and political opponents, her summer at the Treuhaft firm is yet another indication that radical ideology lurks beneath the patina of moderation she has adopted in public life.

-snip

Republican opposition researchers working for President George H.W. Bush were aware of Mrs. Clinton's tie to the Treuhaft firm in 1992, before it was widely known, and apparently chose not to exploit it. They reasoned that she was the wife of the candidate rather than the candidate herself, a reasoning that no longer applies as Mrs. Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination. Lawyers involved with the firm were surprised that Republican operatives never moved to capitalize on Mrs. Clinton's connection.

http://www2.nysun.com/article/66933

George HW Bush shows more decency than Hillary Clinton. What a fucking disgrace.

[Why Syzygy]

28. She was probably a mole.

[global1]

32. Did You Mean This Bill And Hillary?.......

[rug]

15. This doesn't help. He dated Gilda Radner.

Ayers is used to rustling feathers. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan—where he dated the late comedian Gilda Radner—he was drafted into the army and immediately took to organizing anti-war sentiment. When his company was deployed to Vietnam, he went AWOL, subsequently joining up with the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war group responsible for dynamiting public buildings like draft boards, prison offices and, most notably, the Pentagon. (Ayers declines to comment what activities he was involved in—if any.)

He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, his father a businessman, his mother a stay-at-home mom. In high school, Ayers was part of a self-described “nerdy, artsy group,” and though a precocious student, he felt stifled by his surroundings.

“I was in honky heaven, and we were just dying,” he said. “Every time we could, we went out to Chicago and would hang out at blues clubs and go to museums.”

Ayers never completed his studies at the University of Michigan. After seven years on the lam, he turned himself into authorities and spent 10 days in jail. He finished his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in nutrition sciences and went on to receive a master’s from Mills College in education.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2006-06-13/article/24383

And some other things.

[babylonsister]

16. So what? So now guilt by association because of who the 'associate'

associated with? :crazy:

[rug]

17. It's generally bad politics to have an army deserter defend a terrorist.

[babylonsister]

19. What does Gilda Radner have to do with any of this? nt

[Bodhi BloodWave]

23. Nothing at all, its just all they have left i think. *something* has to stick to him afterall n/t

[rug]

25. You should read the link. It has nothing to do with Gilda.

[roguevalley]

35. don't forget. Ayers was doing his thing when Obama was seven.

:rofl:

[Smarmie Doofus]

20. He's right ; it's guilt by association. And it's a pretty flimsy association,

... however, Clinton's attack presages an inevitable GOP opening in the fall.

Better to deal with it now. He's going to be nominated anyway.

[Adelante]

21. Be sure to read grantcart's OP

Senator Obama, Have you ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5575573

[Bensthename]

24. It's all she's got. She can't win on the real issues.

Only distractions.

[Zachstar]

26. Oh wow I can't believe I did not think of that word.

It is McCarthyism as its got everyone up in arms about some damn old movement. And the defamatory statements towards Ayers flows out of many mouths these days.

It is too bad they have to endure this bullshit again.

[K Gardner]

30. The Clintons have no compunction about slandering or demonizing anyone for their own gain.

[democracy1st]

36. thanks for the info