Union Leader - Obama in the mud: So much for honesty

Union Leader:Obama in the mud: So much for honesty - Excerpt

We wonder what those same voters think of Obama's sincerity now. In the past few weeks, Obama has thrown so many false accusations against John McCain that just keeping track of them has become difficult. And these aren't innocent errors. They are deliberate distortions of the sort Obama has always said he reviles.
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On Thursday, Obama said of McCain, "He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis." That's entirely untrue.

As The Washington Post pointed out in an editorial on Friday, McCain in fact has supported many new regulations of financial institutions, including some that Obama opposed. "In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- while Mr. Obama was notably silent," The Post wrote.

Obama attacked McCain for having a top financial advisor who supported a deregulation bill a few years ago. Yet two top Obama financial advisors, with whom he met on Friday to help him form his response to the current troubles on Wall Street, supported the same bill, which was signed by President Clinton.

Also last week, Obama released a Spanish-language ad that portrayed McCain as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic and tried to link him to immigration policies that were not his own as well as some choice Rush Limbaugh quotes that appeared to insult Mexicans.

Anyone who has followed the immigration debate knows that McCain is the most pro-immigration Republican on the national stage and that he is not in the least anti-Hispanic. To pull quotes from Rush Limbaugh, who has completely different immigration views than McCain and who opposed him on that issue for years (and still does) is completely disingenuous. The ad is so bad that even The New York Times called it "misleading."

Obama's campaign also accused McCain of lying when McCain's campaign ran an ad saying that Obama supported sex education for kindergarteners. But the bill in question, which Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate, did indeed change state law to allow sex education for kindergarteners.

Obama has said that he won't attack John McCain's motives, only his policies. But he has repeatedly attacked McCain's motives, suggesting that he has been bought off by oil companies and lobbyists.

Obama's greatest strength as a candidate, aside from his oratorical skill, has long been his apparent sincerity and decency. Voters attracted to him think of him as that rarest of things: an honest politician. He has claimed himself that he would never engage in the sort of deceptive politicking that he says has tainted Washington for so long.

Yet here he is violating his own professed standards. This is not the Barack Obama so many voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere thought they knew. But it is the real Barack Obama. For despite his rhetoric, he is in fact campaigning so dishonestly that even The Washington Post and The New York Times have called him on it. Which means that he is in practice no different from those regular politicians against whom his entire campaign has been built.

Clark on McCain - Sad Critique/Idiotic Strategy

The Union Leader hits the nail on the head with their editorial Clark on McCain: Keep Talking, General. Criticizing someone's military experience in general is weak, but doing so when your own candidate lacks experience of any sort is both sad and stupid.

HERE IS HOW retired Gen. Wesley Clark chose to peddle Barack Obama for President over John McCain:

Click for Editorials & Op-Eds"(McCain) hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded -- that wasn't a wartime squadron. I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become President."

Hasn't held executive responsibility? Let's see, Obama's executive responsibilities have included what? Right. The answer is: nothing. And thank you, Gen. Clark, for pointing out that John McCain commanded the largest fighter squadron in the U.S. Navy. He didn't just command it; he turned it around.

"Although plagued by fatal accidents in the past, the squadron had no fatalities under his command . . . and won its first meritorious unit citation. Mr. McCain's success attracted notice among the admirals in Washington," The New York Times reported in 2000.

McCain's qualifications do not come from being shot down. They come from a career in military and foreign affairs in which McCain displayed an uncommon strength of character and developed a sound judgment in those fields, which are so critical to the United States in this dangerous world.

His opponent, a career lawyer and politician, has shown that his own judgment in those areas is naive and ill-considered. Clark highlights those differences every time he seeks to denigrate McCain's service.

Union Leader: John McCain: A Trusted Leader

Union Leader Reprints the Boston Herald's Edorsement of Senator McCain.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=John+McCain%3a+A+trusted+leader&articleId=776f5762-cb36-40bd-9349-bb07e9e4a1b8

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Editor's Note: The Dec. 21 endorsement of Sen. John McCain for President by the Boston Herald, Boston's conservative newspaper, is so good we wanted to be sure our readers could see it for themselves. We reprint it here, edited for length, with permission.

THERE ARE times in this nation's history so perilous that they cry out for a steady, experienced leader, a person so trusted that we would put the fate of this country in his hands.

This is one of those times, and Sen. John McCain is that person.

He has a brand of courage that is rare in the public arena these days -- a courage forged in part by those years spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and in part by more than two decades of fighting for what he believes in on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

McCain is a man of unwavering conviction and integrity. His values, his beliefs, his goals are what they were when he first entered public life, what they were in 2000 and what they will be a decade from now.

And those goals include a safe and secure America, a country that is respected around the world for honoring its commitments, for encouraging and respecting the rule of law whether in Baghdad or Guantanamo Bay.

The war in Iraq has, of course, loomed large both in the national consciousness and as a campaign issue. McCain knew that the administration's early military strategy was not enough to get the job done. And he was among the first to sign on to this year's troop surge as devised by Gen. David Petraeus.

"John Edwards used to call it `the McCain surge.' He doesn't anymore," McCain said. "Al-Qaida isn't defeated in Iraq, but it's on the run."

But John McCain's expertise doesn't begin and end with national security. He is now a firm believer in the power of tax cuts as a driver of the economy. He saw the Bush tax cuts work and vows to make them permanent. He also supports an end to the alternative minimum tax, which has managed to snare far too many middle class families in its unindexed grip.

McCain's name, of course, is also synonymous with immigration reform -- the kind of real reform that will both safeguard our borders and provide a path to citizenship -- NOT amnesty -- for the 12 million illegal aliens who now live among us. The senator freely acknowledges that his support for immigration reform threatened to jettison his presidential candidacy.

"What we miscalculated was the total mistrust in government," McCain told the Herald. "They didn't believe we could secure the borders." But this isn't 1986. The technology has changed. But more than that, it takes commitment. A McCain administration would have that commitment.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who was himself on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000, took the unprecedented step of endorsing McCain in the upcoming Republican primaries. He did so with these words:

"In this critical election, no one should let party lines be a barrier to choosing the person we believe is best qualified to lead our nation forward. The problems that confront us are too great, the threats we face too real, and the opportunities we have too exciting for us to play partisan politics with the presidency."

The Boston Herald agrees. And so this newspaper too will break with its decades-old tradition of endorsing candidates in both the Republican and Democratic primaries. In doing so we also address our words particularly to those millions of independent voters here, in New Hampshire and around the nation who can choose to cast their ballot in either party primary.

The choice this year is indeed clear. John McCain should be the next President of the United States and the Boston Herald is proud to endorse his candidacy.

Union Leader Explains Why Vote McCain and Not Romney

The Romney backlash: Conservatives are coming home

THERE IS A reason Mitt Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire. It's the same reason his poll numbers are dropping. He has not been able to convince the people of this state that he's the conservative he says he is.

Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn't close the deal for us. Now, two weeks before the primary, the same is happening with voters.

Republicans and right-leaning independents in New Hampshire gave Romney a chance. His events have not been sparsely attended. Nor have they been scarce. He's made more campaign stops here this year than any other Republican, even John McCain.

And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.

How could that be? Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc.

But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction.

Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.

Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.

Last week Romney was reduced to debating what the meaning of "saw" is. It was only the latest in a string of demonstrably false claims -- he'd been a hunter "pretty much" all his life, he'd had the NRA's endorsement, he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. -- that call into question the veracity of his justifications for switching sides on immigration, abortion, taxes and his affection for Ronald Reagan.

In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes. That is why Granite Staters who have listened attentively are now returning to John McCain. They might not agree with McCain on everything, as we don't, but like us, they judge him to be a man of integrity and conviction, a man who won't sell them out, who won't break his promises, and who won't lie to get elected.

Voters can see that John McCain is trustworthy. Mitt Romney has spent a year trying to convince Granite Staters that he is as well. It looks like they aren't buying it. And for good reason.

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=The+Romney+backlash%3a+Conservatives+are+coming+home&articleId=bc5bd60b-68a2-4427-93aa-d0fc2548ba3d