As long as the Bill Ayers problem wasn't being mentioned by the McCain campaign Team Obama didn't address it. It was just something the right wing nuts on talk radio and the blogs worried about. Then this weekend Governor Palin dropped William Ayers like a Weather Underground nail bomb into the bloodstream of the daily campaign. And the initial response from the Obama campaign was quite telling. They attacked the McCain campaign for changing the subject from "the economy." They held with that and got help from the handmaiden media with tut-tut articles that BXO and Bill weren't "close." Non-answer answers. Non-denial denials.
But Governor Palin hammers away at it at every campaign stop to thunderous roars from tens of thousands of voters. Even the friendly dinosaur media has had to at least ask Obama's handlers about it obliquely. So, what's the new spin on Bill Ayers from Axelrod, the man behind the Wizard of O's curtain? The New York Post got this: Barack Obama's top political adviser said today Obama "didn't know the history" of unrepentant bomber William Ayers' activities in the violent Weather Underground movement when the candidate attended a political event at Ayers' home in 1995. "When he went he certainly didn't know the history," chief Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN - arguing for the first time since the story surfaced early this year that Obama was unaware of Ayers' past.
"There's no evidence that they're close," Axelrod added.
"There's no evidence that they're close," Axelrod added.
"No evidence" is weaselly-- like "no controlling legal authority." But, seriously, what kind of an Alfred E. Newman do you have to be to have liberal arts/ law degrees from two Ivy League institutions and not know enough about the 1960's & 70's in America to be aware of the Weather Underground? And, by the way, Senator, your wife brought Ayers in to be a guest speaker where she worked. Did she not know he had committed what you now call "despicable acts?" Is Michelle Obama that dense too? Frankly, they are lying. In Hyde Park, IL one can pal around with domestic terrorists, racist pastors, and political fixers and still get elected. But that's The Chicago Way and it doesn't play so well out in the larger country.
Governor Palin, what do you have top say about this latest twist in the road?
Speaking at events in Florida, Palin pointed to Axelrod's latest comments, saying, "Today they're saying for the first time that Barack Obama didn't know back then about Ayers' radical background."
"Wait a minute," Palin said. "He didn't know a few months ago that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?"
"Wait a minute," Palin said. "He didn't know a few months ago that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?"
UPDATE: Dirty Harry links to a CNN piece on the depth of the Ayers/Obama connection here.
