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Is Rezko Relevant? The McCain campaign says yes
CAMPAIGN 2008

The Return Of Rezko

In campaign's final days, McCain ramps up attack on Obama's ties to convicted Chicago developer.

 

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The McCain campaign, frustrated over their inability to dent Barack Obama over his ties to radical Bill Ayers, is ramping up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate's connections to convicted developer and political fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko. A new video, just released by the Republican National Committee this week, revives charges about a relationship that first came up last spring during the Democratic primaries. The McCain campaign has also begun "robo" calls and direct mailings and is preparing TV ads on Rezko that will "likely" run next week, said a campaign official who asked not to be identified. The calls and mailings will focus in part on a controversial 2005 house purchase by Obama that was made the same day Rezko, a longtime fundraiser for the Illinois senator, bought the vacant lot next door. Critics have alleged that Rezko's purchase helped Obama to buy his south Chicago house—a charge that Obama has strongly denied even while acknowledging that one of his later dealings with Rezko over the house showed "a lapse in judgement."

"Who is Barack Obama?" blares the headline in one of the McCain mailings, which includes a photo of Obama's house under the caption, "What has Rezko done for Obama?" The new GOP video also displays headlines about a recent lawsuit filed by a former real estate analyst against a Chicago area bank that makes new allegations about improper handling of a loan to Rezko and his wife that enabled them to buy the vacant lot next to the Obamas. The lawsuit makes no allegations of wrongdoing against Obama—and the Democratic presidential candidate is not a party to the suit against the Mutual Bank of Harvey, Illinois.

GOP operatives have been pressing the news media to write about it in hopes of reviving questions about why Obama maintained relations with Rezko even after he had been publicly identified as a key figure in an Illinois corruption probe. "Unfortunately, the Rezko issue has not received the attention many believe it should," said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the RNC.

On Saturday, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign said: "At a time when we're facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the fact that the McCain campaign wants to spend the final 10 days of this campaign on questions about a vacant lot that have already been answered by almost every major news organization in the country proves once and for all how fundamentally out of touch and out of ideas they are. We're confident the American people will reject the latest smear tactics from the McCain campaign just as they've rejected all their others."

But privately Obama strategists have been anticipating a last-minute attack on Rezko for months. The campaign last spring even prepared its own mock attack ads about Rezko (and other figures from Obama's past, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and then showed them to focus groups to figure out ways to deflect the attacks, according to a recent NEWSWEEK account.

So far, the McCain campaign has focused its harshest attacks on Obama's loose ties to Bill Ayers, an education professor and former Weather Underground radical with whom the Illinois senator served on two non-profit boards. But there is little sign that the attack ads on Ayers, whom McCain has called a "washed-up terrorist," have succeeded in raising questions about Obama's judgment—in part because there is no indication the two men were ever actually close.

Obama's relationship with Rezko was far more extensive, however. Rezko was for years a principal fundraiser for Obama, having brought in over $250,000 for the Democrat's state Senate races and his 2004 U.S. senate campaign. During Obama's Senate race, Rezko served on his finance committee. For a period during that campaign, "I would probably be talking to him once a day," Obama said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last March.

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  • Posted By: kellyjean @ 11/08/2008 2:20:05 PM

    No such thing as a mole, not according to those that have an understanding of the role. All parties involved know that there must be a certain level of integrity for the job to be performed optimally. All parties involved agree and support this issue and know when and where to ???step outside??? but stay within the boundaries set; but it takes an ???insider???s view??? to know this. The ones that truly ???abuse??? all parties agree that corrective action needs to be taken; the opposite is in place to ensure that the corrective action is reasonable and merited for the infraction.

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    You however, have done nothing but whine, cry and bitch, complain, spew hatred, acted revengeful, and committed acts that are in complete contradiction to the integrity that these people stand and live by. What I did ???TRUMPS??? ALL YOU COULD EVER DO OR THINK TO DO, SO TOP THAT BI*CH!

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 11:00:36 PM

    The problem with Obama is a simple one. One association does not a radical make. But in Obama's case, the list of left-wing radical mentors and associates is seemingly endless, (Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi , etc., etc.) with a new revelation practically every day. With that trend, a picture begins to emerge, and that picture is that Obama is as steeped, not in just left-wing political thought, but in radical left-wing economic and race ideology, to the same extent that Pat Robertson was steeped in the ideology of the radical Religious Right. I would not have voted for Pat Robertson for dog catcher, and for similar reasons, I will not vote for Obama.

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 10:25:21 PM

    In the exchange with "Joe the plumber" Obama unintentionally revealed that he really is as radical as his early political mentors and acquaintances, Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi etc., (gee, there sure seem to be a lot of them) and that he is into the failed economic policy of wealth redistribution. Now there is absolute proof. In 2001, Obama, the "community organizer" turned legislator, said in an interview:

    "And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that,"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

    2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview.

    Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Reid and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive branch without any effective restraint, and you have something that should causes concern even among moderate Democrats.
    See Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

    Indeed, some democrats are publically saying as much. See Barney Franks comments on the news, including face the nation last week, stating essentially that Democrats in Congress intend to greatly raise taxes and go on a spending spree.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJGnSAlqjoU

    See http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html

    Obama's ill-conceived programs will require him to tax, and his health care plan alone is a substantial hidden tax on all business, large an small. In reality, it does not really matter who he taxes, those taxes are going to be passed through the economy. He has to tax, because it is they only way he can pay for his massive social engineering experiments. Any first year economics student knows that taxation is a tool used to contract an economy experiencing inflation, because it reduces demand by reducing the amount of money individuals and businesses have to spend. It is contractionary, which is exactly what you do not want to do when the problem is that the economy is contracting already into recession. Like Hoover and FDR, Obama's plans will only make it worse for longer.

    See e.g. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/03/opinion/main4499465.shtml
    And
    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx


    The democrats failed social engineering policies in the housing market are what brought us to ruin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related
    Even Bill Clinton says so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE
    Obama and a supermajority of Democrats simply is not the change we need, nor is it change we can afford.

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