McCain Flack Nicolle Wallace: We Don't Care About Ayers

This might come to news to those who have been following the recent developments of the presidential campaign, but during the debate spin-war on Tuesday night, McCain aide Nicolle Wallace claimed that "nobody in America" cares about Barack Obama's association with William Ayers and "neither do we."

"[N]obody in America sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out if they're gonna be able to make the mortgage or worried about the price of groceries or price of gas, nobody cares about Mr. Ayers," Wallace told Fox News. "Neither do we."

Delivered to several news outlets during the spin portion of the night's festivities, Wallace qualified her statement by saying Obama's relationship with the '60s radical - which included a one political event, brief meetings, and appearances on an education-policy board - was important in that the Senator was not being truthful with the public.

"What we care about is that Barack Obama described him as a guy in his neighborhood," she said. "He is more than a guy in his neighborhood."

But Wallace's remarks, nevertheless, contrast greatly with the tenor and the tone of much of the messaging coming from the McCain headquarters during the past several days. This past weekend, Gov. Sarah Palin brought up the Ayers issue in the context of suggesting that Obama himself is somehow anti-American.

"Our opponent," the Alaska Republican said, "is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Even earlier, McCain strategist Greg Stimple made the argument to the Associated Press that the campaigns strategy would actually be to divert attention from those "kitchen table" issues that Wallace said were so important, in favor of the more tawdry aspects of Obama's life.

"We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days," he said. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."

The pose that Wallace struck was entirely different. Following her logic, Ayers was brought up as a question of Obama's trustworthiness and, in the end, was not a issue of primary concern to the majority of voters.

"You know I don't think anyone's sitting around the kitchen table or sitting in the TV room tonight watching is gonna tune in and care too much about any of those issues," she later told MSNBC. "On Mr. Ayers, this was raised by Governor Palin as another proof point in Barack Obama's very troubling record of saying one thing and doing another."

Comments

[ebanks84]

DO THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING?

[the-lexicon]

One must understand....there are many moods of maverick.

There's the rich and fulsom side to being a maverick...the proud freedom...the free spirit unbeholden even to the wind...

...but there's the other side to being a maverick...prone to scampering off in random directions for no apparent reason, spooking at the slightest out-of-place sound.

In many ways, a maverick is just like a ping-pong ball...skittering off in one direction, then after a good hard whack with a paddle, off in another direction, then back, then forth, then flip, then flop.

That's what MAVERICKS DO.

however, the analogy to the ping-pong ball is unfair...to the ping-pong ball. It at least obeys the laws of physics, whereas the maverick doesn't. Unless, of course, the ball is hit by a chinese opponent....then physics is irrelevant.

lexicon

[LightningJoe]

Republicans lie.

It's what they do.

[jameshki]

Wow! they are all mavericks in there. Each is going his or her own way. Such a miscoordinated campaign. I can clearly get a glimpse of how a McCain-Palin administration would look and function, totally dysfunctional!

[Audrey704]

They've embraced being mavericky.....CAtch the FeVer

[jameshki]

Bush-Palin. Dumb and Dumberer. McCain - DUMBEREST (for choosing a dumberer), hehe. Clearly a parade of dumb asses these days. No wonder my republican friends are voting for Obama and Biden this NOvember.

[2876]

Palin, Wallace, and Coulter. The terrible trio.

[Skygazer]

This is a sign of yet more impulsive confusing behavior from McCain's people. One minute they say one thing, the next minute they do another. There is no clear consistent central message or theme or presence. Other than the fact that they're desperate to win.

The only time I've seen the Obama Campaign lose it's way a little bit, was after Palin was nominated, and what should've been a time of consolidation for the party hit a bump and it became one of re-parsing the landscape and deciding what to do or not do. And relatively quickly they've utterly neutralized Palin simply by lettingthe McCain Campaign mismanage her and not getting in the way of allowing her incompetence to shine through (and man...does it shine through), as well as the cynicism and poor judgment it reflects on JM's part for picking her as his running mate.

Obama campaign is effective and functional organization that produces real results. That reflects on Obama and his ability to inspire people to give their very best. It is also a sign of what we might see from an Obama White house. Just imagine, a president who can master knowledge quickly, make sound intelligent judgments and is capable of inspiring the best out of extremely talented people to work towards real solutions.

Is that too much to ask for??

[BetterDeadthanRedState]

It never ceases to amaze me that we keep hearing about Ayers, Rezco, and Wright. It just goes to show that The Republican slime machine just can't churn anything real up on Obama.

[labhigh]

CBS Fact-check:

1. "Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation, together."

The foundation they are referring to is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), set up in the early 1990"s with funding from the Annenberg Foundation to reform public schools. Walter Annenberg is a well-known philanthropist and conservative Republican.

"This was not the Bill Ayers and Barack Obama show," says Ken Rolling who was the Executive Director of the CAC and ran the organization, "it was created by a hundred people."

Was it radical? Rolling says that"s in the eyes of the beholder, but he confirms that the CAC funded programs with the following purpose: teacher training, music education, support for new school council candidates, afterschool programs, education research, improvements for literacy and arts programs and initiatives to strengthen parental involvement in public schools.

"The idea that the Annenberg Challenge was somehow the extension of the Weather Underground of the 1960"s, is one of the most lunatic contentions I can imagine," says Mike Flannery, political editor at the CBS Chicago affiliate WBBM who has covered Chicago politics for 35 years.



Obama chaired the board of the CAC but he did not serve on the board with Ayers. Ayers served on a separate advisory board.

2. "They wrote bylaws together."

"They didn"t. They were involved with a large group."

Ayers served on a voluntary advisory board that hired a lawyer to write the bylaws that were approved by entire board of directors .




By Laura Strickler

[kcam44]

the problem is that Hannity and many others are saying that Ayers and Obama were close friends. They were not. As Allen Colmes reported yesterday, there were republicans sitting on that same board with Obama and they didn't have a problem with it until now. The double-standard is laughable. My brother-in-law was a big-time drug-dealer in Chicago before he was murdered. (he also murdered other people). My husband..the total opposite..a retired navy man who had big hopes and dreams of getting out of the ghetto and travelling the world..and he did just that...does that make my husband a bad person? Does it mean he condoned his brother's behavior? (No, he left the ghetto and was determined to have a better life ) Would this disqualify him from being president? Republicans claim they have christian values, the bible says God is a forgiving God and that christians should forgive one another..judge the sin and not the man...Ayers did some horrible things in the past but he is now a repsected figure in Chicago and from what I understand, he's reached out to help the less privileged. What more do they want from Obama. Politicians, as well as voters forgave McCain after the Keating scandal and he was even re-elected. The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

[leecanon]

Where is the Video????

[columbia72]

Lightweight.

[annieR]

Nicolle Wallace is a joke. She said that John McCain could never lie because he was a POW. What a master of non sequiturs.

[sunshine1234]

OK I am figuring out how this works. If I agree with everything you say it is OK. If I ask a question you don't like or don't want to answer you delete it. I am not into sending out hate speech. I am looking for honest answers. I guess you are not into being honest and learning facts. All of you shallow people on this forum, keep doing what you do it makes me feel so much smarter.

[Bongborg]

You can feel just as smart as you wanna be, sunshine. Don't bother us none at all. Why, even President Bush feels smart sometimes, when he's the only one in the room, like when he's sitting on the crapper.

[BetterDeadthanRedState]

. . . or when he's watching a Sarah Palin interview.

[Choicelady]

Since everyone in the world who watches TV knows Obama responded to Clinton on the Ayers issue ages ago, Wallace is a dork for saying Obama says one thing but does another. WE ALL KNOW already about Ayers! And we really don't much care, especially since the Annenberg Foundation's founder just endorsed McCain. This is all a little too surreal - you could NOT make this up. I think Wallace was sent in because now McCain (not the Secret Service) has to rein in Palin since McCain is extolling the wonderfulness of the Annenberg endorsement which links HIM to Ayers. I'm betting that they have cooler heads that note the Rezko association means nothing when compared to the Keating mess - after all, McCain provided actual FAVORS for Keating and is not just 'associated' with Rezko. In the scandal department, Keating trumps a whole lot since we taxpayers PAID for the debacle John McCain made with that.

[nutty4tahoe]

Well it took the McCain campaign a while but they finally figured it out. Sounds like the Secret Service must have shut down Sarah Palin's incendiary comments as inciting to riot, but if so of course the McCain campaign wouldn't want anyone to know that. Maybe when McCain made his "fellow prisoner" gaffe today he was referring to where Sarah Palin could find herself if she doesn't knock it off.

So now the pitbull in lipstick will probably move on to Tony Rezko, let's get her lies on that out of the way. McCain/Palin, you two have gotten really pathetic. I applaud the New York Times for calling them out on it today, saying their campaign was the most filthy campaign in the history of the U.S. One of these days they'll learn that flinging manure is not the way to win high public office in this land.

[JNagarya]

Nor is flining manure a way to gain respect, or cease stinking.

[clcd]

I cannot figure out why Palin feels free to attack Obama about Ayers after her family connection to the Alaskan separatists group. I hear there is a tape of a greeting/speech she sent the group for a meeting earlier this year, which would seem to indicate the family interest in the group is not all in the past (supposedly, Todd Palin was a member until he resigned in 2002 -- I guess they were planning on politics as a way of life back then).

[2876]

Palin's welcoming address to the Alaskan Independence Party can be found on you tube. Palin goes as far as praising the AIP for the work it's done.

[LightningJoe]

OMG! Sarah Palin is "palling around" with her husband, a former secessionist! Judging by the evidnce, there was a lot more palling around in those quarters than there ever was in Chicago.