Fuente: © Republican National Committee (RNC)
http://www.rnc.org/

US ELECTIONS 08: RNC: In Case You Missed It: Lurching With Abandon

/noticias.info/ In one of the numbers from "Fiddler on the Roof," Tevye sings, with a mixture of emotions: "We haven't got the man ... we had when we began." ...

[B]arack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader -- more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most. ...

This is why so many of Senator Obama's strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer. ...

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He's lurching right when it suits him, and he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. ...

And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. ...

"What's he doing?" is the most common question heard recently from Obama supporters. ...

Thousands of Obama supporters flooded the site with protests over his decision to support an electronic surveillance bill that gives retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The senator had previously promised to filibuster the bill if it contained the immunity clause. ...

There's even concern that he's doing the Obama two-step on the issue that has been the cornerstone of his campaign: his opposition to the war in Iraq. ...

He seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders -- as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters -- will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.

Maybe. But that's a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn't engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual.

Time flies and the Iowa caucuses seem a very long time ago.

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