Wading Into The Primary Mess

I’m all for critiquing a candidate based on facts and logic. When Paul Krugman critiques Barack Obama’s proposals, I don’t blow him off.

What I am against is using utter garbage — especially garbage that’s already been debunked — to attack a candidate. I didn’t like it when the Republicans built up Whitewater (a land deal where the Clintons LOST money) into first a scandal and then an excuse to go on an insane and immoral fishing expedition, and I don’t like it when Hillary partisans promote similar nonsense about Barack Obama, zombie-like nonsense that the Republicans and their media friends will thank them for keeping alive beyond the grave.

More on this after the jump.

First off, the whole “he doesn’t have substantive proposals” charge — a charge also leveled against Hillary — has been dealt with by Media Matters’ Jamison Foser. It turns out that both candidates have been bringing up policy specifics and proposals, but that since they involve making the rich pay up for Bush’s coddling of them during the past seven years, the media people — who are themselves rich — pretend these proposals don’t exist.

Seoond off, the Rezko house deal, which Hillary partisans think is so big, apparently doesn’t interest the Rezko prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald at all. In fact, the sole reference of any sort to Obama in the entire 78-page proffer released back in December is a single paragraph on page 36 referring to how Rezko — who has hobnobbed with Illnois politicians of both parties for decades, starting with Jim Edgar (who gave Rezko his first contract) — got an associate of his to donate $10,000 to Obama’s campaign. There’s no hint that Obama even knew, much less approved of, the circumstances surrounding this donation when it was made.

How pathetic is this? So much so that when Chicago-area Republican blogger Dan Curry was using the Rezko proffer in December as a club with which to beat up every local Democrat he could think of (most especially the proffer’s actual main target, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich), he didn’t even bother with bashing Obama, even though Rezko’s Obama connections had hit the news months earlier. However, Curry did later spread around the Rezko guilt by association with a mention of Hillary Clinton’s ties to John Burgess of IPA, whose lawyer is named in the Rezko indictment. (Oh, but of course the Area 51 types will tell you that the Republicans laid off Obama in December because it’s part of their Cunning Plan! Oooh! Some people need to be introduced to the concept of Occam’s Razor.)

Third off: As for the smears directed against Obama’s old law firm, Siun of FDL has handled those by showing that the Miner firm is in fact a do-gooder progressive law firm that works with good-guy groups like ACORN (for whom Obama did work while with Miner)  Contrast that with Hillary’s old firm, Rose Law, which is known for helping big corporations like Wal-Mart with things like “union avoidance“.

Fourth off: Hillary’s insistence in banging the Rezko drum is ironic, considering that her allies Ed Rendell and Antonio Villaraigosa have both had Rezko’s money pass through their hands. Rezko’s a longtime Democratic donor who gave $15,000 to the DNC when Rendell chaired it in 2000, and Rezko’s also given thousands of dollars to LA mayor and Clinton campaign co-chair Villaraigosa’s 2001 mayoral bid as well as to one of Villaraigosa’s PACs in 2003. It was in fact Rezko’s prominence as a Democratic donor in Illinois that led to the infamous photo of him with Bill and Hillary Clinton at the fundraiser for Carol Moseley Braun.

Fifth off: As both ArchPundit and the Chicago Tribune have mentioned, not only is there no evidence that Obama did Rezko’s bidding after taking Rezko’s money, Obama has in fact OPPOSED Rezko’s wishes on key issues.

Now, can we stop with the recycling and resurrection of the debunked zombie lies, please?

Oh, and by the way: I’ve written stuff as recently as last month that caused some Obama fans to get angry at me, so don’t bother trying the “she’s drunk the Obama Kool-Aid” garbage smear on me unless you want to look really, really stupid. Thanks.