There are obvious (R) connections detailed in the article, but do you think there is also any credibility to its criticisms of the Administration, and/or traction it may bring to the campaign battle?
I’d kind of be impressed if they can make killing Bin Laden a downside to Obama’s first term.
It seems to me that any commercial that reminds voters that Obama ordered, and achieved, the killing of Osama Bin Laden is a good thing for the President.
Yes, the voters are going to abandon Obama in droves over this one:
Obama: Bin Laden is dead.
Republicans: Yeah, OK, but… leaks! Disclosures!
That’s what I’d like to believe, but I think the Swiftboating of Kerry was surprisingly effective.
I thought the president was against spiking the ball. But that’s not a big deal to me. Any president would want to wear his death as a badge of honor.
However the body wasn’t even cold when he had the press conference confirming that bin ladin was dead. So any intelligence they were able to collect became useless. And the press conference had to happen because the press was already reporting on it. Somebody told somebody something and that is a problem.
The Republicans are delusional if they think this line of attack will gain any traction. All it does is remind people that bin Laden was captured on Obama’s watch. Arguing over the details just looks petty.
Because John Kerry opposed the Vietnam War after his service, which many people viewed as unpatriotic and a “bad thing”. So they were primed to doubt his service in general.
I don’t know anybody that thinks that killing Osama Bin Laden was a “bad thing”, so they aren’t primed to doubt Obama over his handling of the aftermath.
I mean sure, some people (hi JQPublic) will claim to be upset about it, but those folks aren’t voting for Obama anyways.
I could be wrong, but if PAC commercials can turn the killing of OBL into a bad thing, then we should probably just pack up this whole democracy thing.
Yeah.
AlQ field office: Osama hasn’t answered the phone for two days. Do you think something is wrong?
They knew before his body hit the bottom of the ocean. And the information they got was still useful in any case. Besides no doubt showing the structure and plans of the organization, and many members, it had the added advantage of confirming intelligence gathered by other means, and letting us act on it without blowing the cover of informants.
See the post above yours, for example.
Uh… you do remember that a guy was tweeting about the raid AS IT HAPPENED. How long would it take for them to notice a bunch of helicopters landing in a compound, that a lot of the residents were now dead and that the big guy was gone? So, do you really think it took a White House leak to get the press spun up?
Many people seem to think that Kerry’s problem was more in his failure to respond to the Swiftboat ads. He didn’t recognize the threat they posed until it was too late.
So, do you think Obama should respond directly to these criticisms? And if so, how?
I’m not seeing this as an attempt to ‘Swiftboat’ Obama though. Perhaps I misunderstand the term, but this just seems an attempt to spin things a little, not a total character assassination (which is what I think of when I see ‘Swiftboat’-ing someone)
I’ll leave it to general consensus whether the term I used was the best, I could equally have described it in terms of the technique, widely credited to Carl Rove, of spinning an opponent’s strength into a perceived weakness, with Swiftboating as an example of the strategy.
Wasn’t that comment made about releasing the photos of the corpse (something they rightly didn’t do)? Oh wait- that would mean this comment has nothing to do with what’s going on. The complaints about spiking the ball have been a transparent attempt to stop Obama from taking any credit for something he did because the Republicans realize they can’t compete with it.
There’s no basis for this statement, and given the high number of Al Qaeda leaders who were taken out in the months after Bin Laden was killed, it’s obviously wrong.
Has Obama really taken a lot of credit? Or is it just another right-wing imaginary bogeyman.
Well, he did stride confidently to a podium at the White House to announce the deed was done on national TeeVee.
Granted, it was no strapping on an over-sized cod-piece and jetting off to an aircraft carrier with a big red, white and blue banner behind him, but jeez … how about a little decorum, huh?
I don’t believe this is going to get much traction except among the GOP core.
The narrative is built around an undeniable successful mission.
Yes, leaks occurred and, honestly, the entire thing was politicized more than I am comfortable with, but that is the nature of the beast these days.
The latter. There might be a lot of chatter by those on the left that “Obama got ObL”, but he hasn’t really made a big deal about it. I think many on the right resent the fact the Obama got this done, and are just looking for any excuse to belittle him for it.
He’s never said he did it on his own, but he’s right to take credit for making the decision and for noting that he did what he said he was going to do. For some people, any credit he takes is too much. It’s hard to imagine the public giving a crap or a lot of people changing votes because they think he didn’t handle the credit properly.