Unbelievable.
When you have 7 or 8 houses and you want to give tax cuts to oil companies, you might disagree with a middle class tax cut...but calling it "welfare?"
Senator Obama claims that wants to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes on the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes. That's not a tax cut, that's welfare.
Of course, John McCain is referring to people with incomes low enough not to have to pay federal income taxes. But notice how he says "don't pay taxes." That's a lie.
John McCain...have you heard of payroll taxes? Sales taxes? State income taxes?
I'm sure John McCain knows that lower and middle class people pay taxes too, even if some with the lowest incomes don't pay federal income taxes.
But he wants to use the word "welfare."
You know why, don't you?
He wants to fool white middle class people into thinking that Obama is going to take away their money and give it to black people so he can take their money and give it to corporations instead.
It's a play on the Reagan "welfare queen" canard.
It's despicable.
Racial politics are coming. With Colin Powell rumored to be endorsing Obama on Sunday, Drudge is dispaying a picture from an event in which Colin Powell danced with some Nigerians to make Colin Powell look like a gangbanger.
The right wing, having used Colin Powell as their token for all these years, is about to ghettoize him. It's totally predictable folks...they are going to say that all the black people stick together. What an insult to Colin Powell who has been a member of their party and carried way too much water for them. But they will throw him under the bus and racialize him without remorse, because that is who they are.
There are other racial tea leaves as well, these a bit more subtle.
McCain campaign people keep bringing up Jeremaih Wright just to say that they are not bringing him up and to get brownie points for running an honorable campaign. It's like saying, "Don't think of a Pink Elephant." What's the first thing you think of?
And then on Letterman last night, McCain lied about whether Obama had repudiated John Lewis's remarks. He wants to racialize the campaign instead of having it on the economy. And so he stokes the fires of white resentment, just as he fans the flames of xenophobia by portraying Obama as terrorist sympathizer.
This is a pattern, folks. It's race baiting, pure and simple. They are going as far as they think they can go and maintain plausible deniability.
How should Obama respond? I think he should throw the "welfare" word back in their face and talk about John McCain's support for corporate welfare. He also needs to call Mccain out on his lie that his plan gives money to people who don't pay taxes...payroll and sales taxes are real to people who don't have 7 houses.
Obama is right. Don't get cocky. Remeber New Hampshire.
And to me, part of that is staying on the attack. Now is not the time to be positive and above the fray.
Attack. Attack. Attack.