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McCain slams Obama on 'redistribution of wealth'
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Email|Link|Comments (46) Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor October 27, 2008 11:31 AM
Conservative bloggers and websites have been flogging it, and now John McCain's campaign has put its imprimatur on it: a newly disclosed radio interview in which Democratic rival Barack Obama talks about the redistribution of wealth.
The interview, first reported by the Drudge Report, was with a Chicago radio station while he was an Illinois state senator on Sept. 6, 2001.
Obama is talking about the victories of the civil rights movement, and says, "You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.... And one of the I think 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 and in some ways we still suffer from that."
The entire context of the interview isn't clear, and the sentiment isn't all that different from Martin Luther King Jr., who after the voting rights and other accomplishments of the 1960s civil rights movement moved toward greater emphasis on poverty and economic justice.
But McCain's campaign is jumping on it as part of the assault on Obama's remark to the famous Joe the plumber in Ohio that with America so economically troubled, it might be good to spread the wealth.
"The American people continue to learn more about Barack Obama. Now we know that the slogans 'change you can believe in' and 'change we need' are code words for Barack Obama's ultimate goal: 'redistributive change.' In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn't been more 'radical' and described as a 'tragedy' the Court's refusal to take up 'the issues of redistribution of wealth.' No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench – as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it. Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change," McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said in a statement.
[link to www.boston.com]
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