Nothing can turn rabid liberals against you faster than daring to criticize Obama as Democratic Mayor Cory Booker found out recently.
On NBC’s “Meet The Press Booker Obama's negative attack ad against Mitt Romney for his former work at Bain with attacks against Obama for his close association to Jeremiah Wright. Booker said "I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, it — they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this to me — I’m very uncomfortable."
He then added, "This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop."
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Republicans immediately highlighted Booker's statements and liberals pounced on Booker, basically ignoring the good things Booker had to say about Obama and crucifying him for daring to criticize Obama's attack against Romney's former work with Bain, which forced Booker to take to social media to "clarify" his remarks.
TPM describes this as "The Re-Education of Cory Booker."
Via Wapo's The Fix:
Booker, one of the most tech- and social media-savvy politicians in the country — he has more than a million Twitter followers — posted a video on You Tube that attempted to re-frame his comments as broadly supportive of the president and said he “encouraged” Obama to make an issue out of Romney’s record at Bain.
Booker did, however, re-iterate his belief that the tone of the campaign was “nauseating” and “calls to our lowest common denominators.”
What Booker tweeted out Sunday afternoon was a nearly four-minute long video. But, as Politico’s Dylan Byers pointed out Sunday night, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt later tweeted out an edited, 35-second version that included only Booker’s comments on Romney.
Given all of that, it’s pretty clear what happened here. The Obama team saw Booker equating attacks on Bain Capital with attacks on Rev. Jeremiah Wright — he said almost exactly those words — and knew they had a political mess to clean up.
Lesson for Democrats: If you are an Obama supporting Democratic politician, it doesn't matter how supportive you are for Obama if you dare utter one criticism, you must be "re-educated."
Couple of points now:
• The GOP "attacks" using Jeremiah Wright, are actually referring to a proposal for campaign ads, which was rejected, but that the New York Times reported on, then liberals had a complete freakfest about the rejected proposal, thereby putting Wright's name in headlines across the Internet. Liberals then continued to spotlight that rejected proposal, creating even larger headlines from CNN and ABC News.
Side note- Even though the GOP, nor Romney has used Wright in any campaign ads, it is worth remembering that in 2008, Obama said, and I quote, " I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past. The fact that he's my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue."--- Barack Obama, April 2008, via USA Today
(Video of Obama saying that, here)
Thank you liberals, then thank you again.
• Booker equating Obama's "nauseating" campaign ad against Romney's tenure at Bain with Jeremiah Wright, is comparing apples to oranges.
Bain was a company Romney worked at.
Jeremiah Wright is Obama's former pastor, a man Obama described as "like family", Wright married Barack and Michelle Obama, baptized their children, and was the inspirational force behind Obama’s first autobiography and Obama sat in a pew at Wright's church for almost 20 years while Wright preached racism, American hatred with his "God Damn America" sermons and publicly said that the 9/11 terrorist attack against America was "chickens coming home to roost."
If I were cynical I would think the GOP group, having been shot down on their proposal for a campaign using Wright, then decided to let liberals do the job for them since the GOP and conservatives superPACs wouldn't.
Leak the proposal, use NYT to report on it, let liberals create the headlines, then shrug and say, "they did it to themselves."
Lesson for Republicans: Why waste good money that can be used elsewhere when you can use the leap-before-they-look mentality of the left to get the message out.