Furor over GOP anti-Obama ad in NC grows
WASHINGTON _ If you’re expecting a tepid fall campaign in the race for president, you might want to take a foreign vacation.
The dust-up over an ad by the North Carolina Republican Party featuring Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is taking some new turns, with television stations in Charlotte and Raleigh refusing to run it.
Racially divisive campaigning in North Carolina is a sensitive matter. A famous spot dealing with racial quotas was aired by former Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990, helping him to hold off the challenge of Harvey Gantt, an African American.
The National Republican Party and Sen. John McCain have asked North Carolina Republicans not to air the ad. McCain said today on the Today Show: “I have done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue.”
North Carolina Republicans are fending off charges of race-baiting and refusing to back down.
The Democratic National Committee responded to McCain’s latest remarks by saying today that the Arizona senator should have done more than send an email to North Carolina’s GOP chair.
Meanwhile, activists led by Floyd Brown — who created the infamous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis — announced they will take aim at Obama soon. “Consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama refuses to wear the flag on his lapel or that he does not place his hand over his heart in the presence of the American flag. Consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama embraces Jeremiah Wright, a man who has preached the most vile racial hatred and anti-American sentiments …” the group said in a news release this week.
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Gee, the Republican/Neo-Con smear campaign starts earlier and earlier. In some strange way, while the North Carolina Republicans are saying that the ad is really about two candidates in NC, they have structured it so that John McCain can say “I have nothing to do with this”. Watch out Senator McCain some of the same people are not happy with you and maybe are trying to undo your nomination.