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Obama Vows Tough Campaign:”If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

June 14th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Democratic presumptive Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama has seemingly channeled Sean Connery in the movie “The Untouchables” by serving notice that if the Republicans aggressively go after him he’s ready to respond in kind — and then some:

Barack Obama is warning supporters that the general election fight between him and John McCain may get ugly, but the Illinois senator is vowing not to back down.

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, according to pool reports.

“We don’t have a choice but to win,” Obama said, joking that he has heard “folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles games.”

Obama again said that the GOP will make try to make him look “scary” to voters.

And, in the predictable way our politics functions you could guess what the Republican response to this would be — and you’re correct:

Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said Obama’s rhetoric abandons Obama’s campaign themes of hope and change.

“In the last 24 hours, he’s completely abandoned his campaign’s call for ‘new politics’, equating the election to a ‘brawl’ and promising to ‘bring a gun,’” Conant said.

Actually, that isn’t what Obama says here at all.

He’s indicating that unlike past Democratic nominees — with the exception of Bill Clinton — he’s not going to wait to respond to attacks nor is he going to not counter an aggressive campaign with a campaign calibrated to be tough enough or tougher to counter any Republican attack.

Michael Dukakis let the Republicans portray him as a kind of robot, define him with the infamous Willy Horton ad and later run an ad that used footage of him in a tank looking like Snoopy. His campaign tried to ignore the negative campaigning and paid the price. John Kerry waited so long before he condescended to respond to the Swift Boat attacks that by the time he did his own boat sank.

Obama already tipped his hand on how he plans to handle negative campaigning aimed his way when it was announced that his campaign was starting a website to directly counter and answer — an debunk — Internet “smears,” such as the false charge that he is Muslim or continued speculation that there is a tape showing his wife Michelle screaming about “Whitey” at his ex-church.

People forget, but Bill Clinton, James Carville and Paul Begala started their famous campaign “war room” due to disastrous past Democratic national campaigns where charges were made and Democrats didn’t counter them fast enough or Democrats let the campaign momentum and media narrative slip from them to the Republicans.

So Obama’s channeling Connery is by no means a rejection of a campaign of hope and change. Its embracing a campaign that is planning to stay on equal footing with the Republicans, rather than allowing itself to become a doormat.

Now, if Obama says “My name is Bond. James Bond…” there MIGHT be some reason to worry..

UPDATE: For another reaction to Obama’s comments GO HERE.

Here’s the scene from “The Untouchables”:



This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under John McCain, Elections, Newsweek Blogitics, Negative Campaigning, Barack Obama, Republicans, Politics, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Movies. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 14 Comments

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    "We don’t have a choice but to win.."~Barack Obama

    Yes. So now it's time for you to step aside and let that candidate who will surely win take the nomination in August.

    Anything less, in light of the fact that she won the popular vote, would be selfish of you. Especially when you know your inexperience is going to be costly to a win this Fall.

    Selfish, selfish, selfish..

    And no, you're not the second Martin Luther King Jr. You're a slick and rich Yankee with connections...
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    Give it up. She did not win the popular vote unless you give zero votes to Obama from Michigan. Hillary totally supports Obama. And she's as Yankee as anybody else - born in Park Ridge, IL with a Chicago ayaccent.
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    Let's hope than Senator Obama will be as tough on the Iranians as he promises to be on the Republicans.
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    It's great that he says he does not want to lose the media narrative, but he lost the news cycle every week to Hillary the last two months of the campaign and the same thing is happening now to McCain.

    Just watch the hand wringing that those clowns on Morning Joe give Wesley Clark and how he had to fight back on them hard. Just watch how this innocuous quote itself has been an "issue" only because the McCain campaign picked up on it and issued a press release about it. So now everyone is covering it.

    How stupid. McCain says jump and the media jumps. McCain says interpret things this way and the media interprets things their way or at least delivers their false and misleading interpretation without criticism.
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    A comment on "swiftboating," with the disclosure that, yes, I'm a Republican and a McCain supporter.

    The assumption from the Democratic side seems to be that if only Kerry responded quickly and aggressively to the Swift Boat attacks, he could have emerged unscathed. But that seems to ignore the fact that the most effective of those attacks centered on Kerry's post-Vietnam activities.

    The Swift Vets were, in my opinion, at their weakest when questioning Kerry's valor as a soldier, because it was unseemly, and because no voter had the time or resources to evaluate a he-said he-said dispute. But the Swift Vets were quite effective when calling attention to the undisputed: 1) Kerry acted as spokesmen for a group of fake soldiers, the Winter Soldiers, whose sole purpose was to defame actual soldiers, 2) Kerry gained fame and the start of his own political career with his own defamatory Congressional testimony, reporting that his fellow soldiers committed "atrocities in the style of Ghengis Kahn," etc.

    The commercials featuring Kerry's Congressional testimony were devastating. What, precisely, could Kerry have said to staunch the damage, even if he had responded on day one? Sometimes the truth hurts.

    Obama, in San Francisco, told us that those who have contrary views in the areas of guns and religion are basically too brain-deficient to develop those ideas as rational convictions; rather, these are values people cling to because they're bitter and haven't worked for a while.

    That statement tells us a truth about Obama, and I hope it hurts him too, even if those on the other side yell "swiftboating."
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    'Obama, in San Francisco, told us that those who have contrary views in the areas of guns and religion are basically too brain-deficient to develop those ideas as rational convictions; rather, these are values people cling to because they're bitter and haven't worked for a while"----

    ---IS AN EXAMPLE OF SWIFTBOATING.
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    This is going to be ugly.

    The LA blog chides Obama for referring to guns, while ignoring the fact that the referrence comes from a quote. Besides, has no one heard of symbolism?

    By now, almost every word in the English language is radioactive.
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    Obama is not going to start any fights and if the Republicans go after him with lies or racist comments or questioning his patriotism, then Obama is not going to take it laying down. Good for him- he's not a pushover.
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    Well, if there was a "fighter" in this campaign cycle, it was Hillary. No question about it: kicking, scratching, gouging, sucker-punching, fighting Hillary. And I genuinely mean that in a good way.

    At a fundamental level, it's what you want in your candidate: the overwhelming desire to win. Had she prevailed I would have been thrilled to have her represent the Democrats. There would have been blood in the scuppers -- Republican blood.

    But there's fighting and then there's fighting.

    Aikido (合気道, aikidō?) is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying (with) life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit."


    ...or as Obama likes to say, there's no blue states, no red states. Just the United States.


    Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury.


    You heard right: win without destroying your enemy.

    Listen, I am hardly the first person to make this analogy. Google "aikido Obama" and you get at least 80 thousand citations. And/But more to the point -- just because you make the analogy doesn't mean's it's true. Can Obama pull it off? Is he an Aikido sensei? Time will tell. But I like that he showing a different way.

    Like I said, grasshopper: there's fighting and then there's fighting.
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