PrintOctober 18, 2008
Obama Calls for 'Special Prosecutor' in ACORN investigation
This move by Obama is pure Chicago politics; when confronted with accusations of wrong doing, throw up as much smoke as possible in order to deflect attention.
This "I am shocked - shocked I tell you! Please investigate this horrible situation..." has been used successfully in the past by Mayor Daley. And Obama is also using this situation to go on the attack - another classic move right out of the Chicago political handbook: "When caught red handed, blame your opponent."
Meanwhile, Obama could be using the time he's buying to cover his tracks. And throwing ACORN under the bus could be next:
The Obama campaign announced Friday that it is asking Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over any investigations of voter fraud or voter suppression to Special Prosecutor Nora Dannehy."Fraud AND suppression?" Turning a defense against a political attack into an attack on your opponent is very clever but I doubt if too many people besides the conspiratorial loons who make up the Democratic party base actually believe that GOP election monitors "supress" any votes except perhaps from those who try to vote illegally. In the universe of the liberal Democrats, the law doesn't matter - especially if the person trying to break the law was going to vote for them. It's why they oppose voters having to show any identification at all in order to vote. Why shouldn't felons, illegal aliens, and people coming from out of state be able to vote in perfect confidence that no one will ever challenge their criminal activity?
Dannehy is also the special prosecutor recently appointed to investigate the U.S. attorney firing scandal.
It's the latest salvo in an escalating war over allegations of possible voter irregularities during the upcoming presidential election.
"What they're actually about is the unprecedented effort to essentially sap the American people of confidence in the voting process," Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign's general counsel, said Friday on a conference call.
Bauer said partisan politics was behind Thursday's leak from senior governmental officials about a preliminary FBI investigation into the voter registration activities of ACORN, the embattled community organizing group that has become the focus of Republican efforts to highlight possible fraud as the election approaches.Watch the latest report on ACORN's voter registration efforts »
"ACORN is a tool for attacking voters," Bauer said.
"We need to have these matters removed from the day-to-day department's direct control and put into the special prosecutor's independent hands," Bauer told reporters Friday. "She should have responsibility for reviewing any and all matters involving allegations of fraud and suppression in this election."
Obama is hoping that no such move is made to engage the special prosecutor in this matter. He knows the odds of it are extremely long. Perhaps McCain and Bush should call his bluff and agree. Then where will the Messiah be?
Sweating out an investigation that already shows a lot of dots that could be connected that lead from ACORN right to his campaign.
