John McCain is a Desperate Man. Today he's obsessed with the single word "redistributive", which he plucks from a discussion of civil rights and constitutional law among Obama and fellow law professors on WBEZ radio in 2001. McCain attempts to use it to convince voters that Obama is a "socialist".
DEBUNKED. Here's Politico:
[Obama legal advisor Cass] Sunstein argued that Obama is discussing redistribution in a relatively narrow legal context: The discussion in the 1970s of whether the Supreme Court would create the right to a social safety net -- to things like education and welfare. He also noted that in the interview, Obama appears to express support for the court's rejection of that line of argument, saying instead that the civil rights movement should aim for the same goals through legislative action.
"What the critics are missing is that the term 'redistribution' didn’t mean in the Constitutional context equalized wealth or anything like that. It meant some positive rights, most prominently the right to education, and also the right to a lawyer," Sunstein said. "What he’s saying – this is the irony of it – he’s basically taking the side of the conservatives then and now against the liberals."
Link to audio of the full 2001 discussion on WBEZ is here. A bunch of law professors sitting around talking. About, you know, legal stuff. Using legal terms. Oooh! Scary!
Yet here's McCain, desperately, pathetically attempting to spin "socialism" out of nothing:
MCCAIN:
In a radio interview revealed today, he said that one of the quote -- "tragedies" of the civil rights movement is that it didn't bring about a redistribution of wealth in our society. He said, and I quote, "One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."
That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else. He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.
McCain is the Emily Litella of politics.
Here's more from the Politico article:
The first mention of redistribution, which does not appear on the YouTube clip, comes when Obama discusses a 1973 Supreme Court ruling finding that there is no right to education.
"One other area where the civil rights area has changed... is at the state level you now have state supreme courts and state laws that in some ways have adopted the ethos of the Warren Court. A classic example would be something like public education, where after Brown v. Board, a major issue ends up being redistribution -- how do we get more money into the schools, and how do we actually create equal schools and equal educational opportunity? Well, the court in a case called San Antonio v. Rodriguez in the early '70s basically slaps those kinds of claims down, and says, 'You know what, we as a court have no power to examine issues of redistribution and wealth inequalities. With respect to schools, that's not a race issue, thats a wealth issue and something and we can't get into."
Later in the interview, Obama seemed to concur with conservative and mainstream liberal scholars on the court's more modest view of its powers:
"Maybe i am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know, I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts," he said. "You know the institution just isn't structured that way. Just look at very rare examples where during he desegregation era the court was willing to, for example, order ... changes that cost money to local school district[s], and the court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage, it was hard to figure out, you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that is essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. The court is not very good at it, and politically it is hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So i think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts, I think that as a practical matter that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it."
So a law professor discussing whether the courts have the power to bring about "redistributive change" such as better funding of schools - and concluding that they have no such power - becomes a "socialist" according to John McCain. What other words are forbidden, John?
How embarrassing for John McCain. You'd think he'd be mortified by the whole thing.
And isn't it rather unseemly for a kept man like John McCain to whine on and on about "redistribution of wealth" while he lives off his wife, the zillionaire heiress? How much was McCain making when he met the 24 year old Cindy? Talk about your redistribution of wealth!