Posted by
Priscilla Vanilla on Thursday, September 18, 2008 3:38:51 AM
Since this is my very first post on the townhall blog site, I will start by introducing myself using my pseudonym, Priscilla Vanilla. I'm neither prim nor bland, and you underestimate me at your own risk!
Pre-Election Jitters
As we near the end of this election cycle, I find myself with a lot of unanswered questions. As a Republican and proud conservative, I am deeply puzzled by the lack of confrontation, aggressiveness, and proactivity my party has shown since their convention. I watch in helpless frustration as McCain and Palin undure endless attacks without ever mounting any of their own. They have been on the defensive for weeks now, and this has rendered them impotent (no McCain jokes, please!). I'm still waiting for the mythical and much-feared Republican Attack Machine, the one that Hillary Clinton warned voters that Barak Obama could never withstand. Well...where is it? What are they waiting for, and are they waiting at all? Hillary already did a lot of the dirty work for them : photos of Obama in Muslim garb, the Rev. Wright scandal, a little bit about Rezko and Ayers, playing the race card, etc. You mean to tell me that the Repubs got nothing left? Somehow, I don't believe that, and I'm sure Obama and co. don't either.
But while they have their shields up, deflecting the slings and arrows of the Dems and the mainstream media, so much is going left unsaid. Rezko is a convicted felon, and a close friend of Obama's, yet he has still not sat on the hot seat and been questioned aboiut his full relationship with this man. Obama lives in a Hyde Park mansion, and his tax returns showed he made millions. When and how did he amass this great wealth? Because if he's claiming he made it all off his two books, then he's a liar. It would be easy to check his salary as a senator, or as a law professor, or as an author. What advance did he receive? What were his royalties for his first and then subsequent printings?
Then there's William Ayers. After the initial frenzy when the documents detailing the Annenberg Project became public, we have heard very little about its contents. Why? According to some, there was a lot of worthwile information there that warranted scrutiny.Apparently, millions in grant money was squandered, and perhaps even federal matching funds, as well. Yet again, McCain/Palin is silent, prefering to argue about name-calling and dirty campaign ads. Doesn't the American public deserve to know just what the relationship was between the ex-radical Ayers and Obama? Perhaps they are waiting for the debates, but that would be silly, as the debate format is so limited that no candidate is given time to formlate questions or answers.
The Elephant in the Room
It hasn't escaped my notice that ever since the primaries, no one from either party has brought up the issue of immigration, or talked about McCain's controversial support for immigration legislation, or Obama's credibility issues with Hispanic voters. It is such a hot-button, divisive issue that no one dares touch it - until today. Obama ran a scurrilous, sneaky and erroneous campaign ad in Spanish, which involved none other than Rush Limbaugh. The ad was soon repudiated by the msm, and called fraudulent, but had the damage already been done? If the Repubs play their cards right, this could be one sticky wicket for the Big O. his unpopularity with Hispanics has not changed since the spring primaries, and there is certainly an undercurrent of racial tension in all of that. It would behoove McCain to subtlely exploit that, and turn the race-baiting back onto the Obama campaign. After all, his operatives have been making little noises about race being a deciding factor in this close contest, coded language, etc. It would be wrong and hurtful for McCain to just ignore these tactics, and try to weather the storm.
Where have all the loudmouths gone?
One can't help but notice the silence coming from certain political/cultural figures who had loomed so large in the 2004 election from the Dem ticket of Kerry/Edwards. Where are the lunatic rantings of the likes of Michael Moore or Sean Penn? Why has the militant-left web activists, moveon.org, not contributed to the political dialogue, at least publicly? Furthermore, where are prominent black leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson? Have they been muzzled by the Dems and the Obama campaign in case they remind voters that Obama is indeed half African-American, and had curried favor from black, inner-city politcal figures very much like Jackson and Sharpton? instead, we hear the misguided but sincere support from popular, unthreatening black entertainment types, like P. Diddy and Spike Lee.