October 10, 2010
A WHITE HOUSE WITH NO RESPECT FOR NARRATIVE:
Obama Ratchets Up Tone Against G.O.P. (PETER BAKER, 10/10/10, NY Times)
“You can’t let it happen,” Mr. Obama told thousands of supporters gathered on a school lawn in a predominantly African-American, working-class neighborhood of northern Philadelphia. “Don’t let them hijack your agenda. The American people deserve to know who’s trying to sway their election and you can’t stand by and let the special interests drown out the voices of the American people.”Mr. Obama has increasingly used the issue of campaign finance to motivate his supporters as the elections grow nearer and polls signal trouble for Democrats. With his party outmatched in advertising sponsored by groups that do not have to disclose the source of their financing because of a free-speech Supreme Court decision earlier this year, Mr. Obama has suggested that the sponsors of campaign advertising have sinister motivations.
“You don’t know,” he said here. “It could be the oil industry; it could be the insurance industry; it could even be foreign-owned companies. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. Now that’s not just a threat to the Democrats; it’s a threat to democracy.”
How do you square the legitimate argument that the GOP is dangerously nationalist these days with the notion that they are dangerously prey to international influence?
