GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory; Obama speech "written to mau mau the media"

[DeepModem Mom]

The Politico: GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory
By JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/19/08


The inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor could offer the GOP a road to victory, insiders believe. (AP)

For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant Republican and independent votes. Now, with the emergence of the notorious video showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting U.S. policy for the Sept. 11 attacks and generally lashing out against white America, GOP strategists believe they’ve finally found an antidote to Obamamania.

In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base.

In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey....

Even Obama’s much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been given a rare political gift. “It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial board, the network production people and the media into submission. Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest,” said GOP media consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the 2002 ad tying then-Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. “Not good enough.”

Until now, questions about Obama’s allegiance to country had been largely confined to the fever swamps of the Internet and e-mail chains. They took the form of dark whispers about the greater meaning of Obama’s failure to put his hand over his heart during one national anthem, his decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and, at their most toxic, the outright lie that he’s a Muslim or some sort of Manchurian candidate.

With Michelle Obama’s comments last month that she was, thanks to her husband’s candidacy, for the first time “really proud of (her country),” the topic entered the more mainstream elements of the conservative conversation, ricocheting across talk radio, cable news and blogs. “All the sudden you’ve got two dots, and two dots make a line,” said Castellanos. “You start getting some sense of who he is, and it’s not the Obama you thought. He’s not the Tiger Woods of politics.”...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9116.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. Never answers/solutions...always the Pubs go for denigration/distortion

make the other guy look bad so the Pubs look good. They are so LAME

[NanceGreggs]

2. I'll see ya one Reverend Wright ...

... and raise ya one Robertson, one Falwell, one Hagee and a pair of Haggards (the gay, prostitute-payin', drug-taking one PLUS the rehabilitated "formerly gay" one).

Still want to put your money in the pot, GOP?

Nah, I didn't think so.

The smart player knows when to hold 'em, knows when to fold 'em. And if you want to play "Wacky Preachers", looks like the GOP is holding all the "picture cards" - you know, the ones that REALLY STICK in the voters's minds when shown as a 60-second campaign commercial two weeks before election night.

Just sayin' ...

[madrchsod]

5. you missed parsley

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x107115
rod parsley..more on black genocide - Democratic Underground

[NanceGreggs]

6. You're right, I did!

DUH!!!

Thanks! :toast:

[IrishBloodEngHeart]

3. Fear and Loathing- a republican campaign staple

as the old white baby boomer and older uptight part of the electorate slides into history and gets balanced out by a younger generation, that card gets harder and harder to play.

[MADem]

9. The Greatest Generation isn't dead yet, and you're already killing off the Boomers?

You've got some waiting, yet, before you plant all of the Love Bead Lot into the ground.

I take the "Greatest Generation" to the polls. They're in their eighties, now, many of them. They vote, too. Faithfully. Rain, snow, sleet. They don't oversleep or forget. They're pretty healthy, too, for old folks. If I'm five minutes late to get them, they hand me my ass--and I VOLUNTEER to do the duty!

See, the thing is, when those idealistic youngsters from this "new" generation get older, they just might turn into cynical shitheads, many of them, just like some of their once-idealistic parents did. All I can say is, there are more "College Republicans" around nowadays than there were during the Vietnam era.


"We can CHANGE the world..." didn't originate with Obama, ya know--every generation comes up with some version of that assertion. In the sixties, this was it--well-worth hearing again, and again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEFsBF1X1ow

It's kind of interesting, looking at the masses of people in Chicago, and they couldn't muster more than a few hundred on the anniversary of this war. I suppose if there were a draft, there'd be more interest--all politics is local.

Though your brother’s bound and gagged
And they’ve chained him to a chair
Won’t you please come to Chicago
Just to sing
In a land that’s known as freedom
How can such a thing be fair
Won’t you please come to Chicago
For the help we can bring
We can change the world -
Re-arrange the world
It’s dying - to get better
Politicians sit yourself down,
There’s nothing for you here
Won’t you please come to Chicago
For a ride
Don’t ask Jack to help you
Cause he’ll turn the other ear
Won’t you please come to Chicago
Or else join the other side
We can change the world -
Re-arrange the world
It’s dying - if you believe in justice
It’s dying - and if you believe in freedom
It’s dying - let a man live it’s own life
It’s dying - rules and regulations, who needs them
Open up the door
Somehow people must be free
I hope the day comes soon
Won’t you please come to Chicago
Show your face
From the bottom to the ocean
To the mountains of the moon
Won’t you please come to Chicago
No one else can take your place
We can change the world -
Re-arrange the world
It’s dying - if you believe in justice
It’s dying - and if you believe in freedom
It’s dying - let a man live it’s own life
It’s dying - rules and regulations, who needs them
Open up the door
We can change the world

[madrchsod]

4. well john "supported" obama

and huckybee understood what obama was talking about...so how is the right going to debunk those two republicans?

[anamandujano]

11. What you all are not factoring in is that the Repukes are as hypocritical

as Obamatrons.

I wouldn't count on their psycho preachers rendering Obama's psycho preachers null and void.

I also suspect there will be more than a few Democrats that bristle at the whitey hating Wright and Meeks.

[MADem]

14. The big difference with Popeye's preachers are that the old Sailor Man was not a

member of their CONGREGATIONS. Popeye wasn't giving those hatemonger preacher guys twenty five grand a year. Odds are better that they were exhorting their flocks in ways to encourage donations to Popeye, not the other way around.

And of course, Popeye has said, repeatedly, that he doesn't agree with everyone who supports him.

Popeye looks to me like a guy who sleeps in on Sunday morning. It's probably one of his few appealing characteristics.

[MADem]

7. Ah, I see our "friends" at THE POLITICO have finally taken the gloves off.

I remember when they were going easy on BO and excoriating Clinton, they were touted here as "fair" and "reasonable" and it didn't matter that they were owned by a far rightwing nut! Naaaah--there was no media bias with them, they were "good guys!"

They wasted little time going for the throat--page TWO piles on even more:

Just as with John F. Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, Republican strategists view the Wright flap as deeply damaging to Obama because it strikes at the message, or set of principles, at the heart of his candidacy.

In Obama’s case, the core of his appeal has been that he transcends race and is more inclined toward conciliation than combat.

“He wants the authentic black image but he also wants to keep all his safe, suburban Obamacans in line,” said Rick Wilson. “Well, you can’t have both. They’re mutually exclusive.”

“This is a guy who associates with some real haters,” he added.

Perhaps most damaging for Obama, his opponents now have the powerful video to make that case.

[dhill926]

8. "written to mau mau the media"....

wow, they're not even subtle anymore. This is an election for the soul of our nation. Gird up for the battle folks....

[MADem]

10. Deliberately chosen. The Mau-Mau were Kenyan, you see. NT

[anamandujano]

12. That term is new to me. What does it mean exactly?

"Mau-Mau"

[MADem]

13. They were a group of Kenyans who rebelled against the British.

The end result was independence. In the interim, though, there were atrocities on both sides, a lot of "racial disharmony" and a whole lotta violence.

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of summarizing (you can dig deeper at other citation sources, but this is a fairly decent quick-n-dirty):

Drat! Edit to include the LINK that I forgot--- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising

The Mau Mau Uprising was an insurgency by Kenyan rebels against the British Empire administration that lasted from 1952 to 1960. The core of the resistance was formed by members of the Kikuyu ethnic group, along with smaller numbers of Embu and Meru. The uprising failed militarily, though it may have hastened Kenyan independence. It created a rift between the white colonial community in Kenya and the Home Office in London that set the stage for Kenyan independence in 1963. It is sometimes called the Mau Mau Rebellion or the Mau Mau Revolt, or, in official documents, the Kenya Emergency.

The name Mau Mau for the rebel movement was not coined by the movement itself- they called themselves Muingi ("The Movement"), Muigwithania ("The Understanding"), Muma wa Uiguano ("The Oath of Unity") or simply "The KCA", after the Kikuyu Central Association that created the impetus for the insurgency. Veterans of the independence movement referred to themselves as the "Land and Freedom Army" in English.


...
The meaning of the term Mau Mau is much debated. Proffered etymologies include:

The 2006 edition of American Heritage Dictionary lists the etymology as the sound imitative of foraging hyenas.
it is the name of a range of hills (occurring in various geographical names e.g. the Mau Escarpment, the Mau stream in Eastern Province, a place called Mau in the Rift Valley Province, etc.)
it was a nonsense word created by British settlers to demean the rebels
A backronym that has been created for it is "Mzungu Aende Ulaya — Mwafrika Apate Uhuru". This Swahili language phrase translates in English to, "Let the white man go (back) to Europe; let the African attain freedom."
it is a mistransliteration of "Uma Uma" which translates in English to "Get out Get out"
it is in reference to a 'magic potion' the Kikuyu would drink, making their soldiers invulnerable.
it is in reference to the secrecy of the communication between group members: "Maundu Mau Mau" in Kikuyu translates to "those things, those same things" .
Perhaps the most creative attempt so far is reported in John Lonsdale's 1990.<6> He quotes a Thomas Colchester, who argued that since ka is a diminutive prefix in Swahili (as it is in Kikuyu and several other Bantu languages), while ma is an augmentative prefix, Mau, therefore, indicates something greater than KAU. KAU was the leading forum at the time for African political participation, but would have been seen as somewhat staid and conservative by the young radicals who would form Mau Mau. Lonsdale recommends this etymology on the ground that it requires no single originator.
In his memoir The Hardcore Karigo Muchai explains the etymology of Mau Mau in this way: "Now in Kikuyu when referring to whispers or voices that cannot quite be understood, one uses the expression 'mumumumu'. This apparently was heard by a journalist in the court as 'Mau Mau', and the following day the newspapers reported that the men had taken a 'Mau Mau' oath."<7>

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Thanks for this info. I knew the term Wilson used was "loaded" --

which was why I put it in the subject line -- but didn't know all of these theories about the origin of it.