Obama blasts McCain over lobbyist ties
Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3:37 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy
TAMPA, FL -- While once again claiming to be on the threshold of the Democratic nomination, Obama picked what could be considered his first fight of the general election.
“John McCain has agreed with me on some of the steps we need to make our government more ethical and accountable,” Obama began here at yet another big-crowd rally. “Almost a decade ago, he offered a bill that, in his words, would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists. Let me repeat that: Ten years ago, John McCain offered a bill that said he would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists.
“And he did this because he said that having lobbyists on your campaign is a conflict of interest. This is what he said ten years ago. Well, I'll tell you that John McCain then would be pretty disappointed with John McCain now because he hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington to run his campaign.”
Obama then used a comment made by McCain campaign senior advisor Charlie Black to rally the crowd around his anti-lobbyist argument. Black told reporters aboard McCain’s plane on Monday, “I do not believe that average voters out there care,” about lobbyists working for McCain’s campaign.
But today, Obama -- and the crowd in Tampa -- disagreed. “When he was called on it, his top lobbyists actually had the nerve to say the American people won't care about this,” Obama said, to chorus of ‘boos’ from the crowd. “Well, I think the American people do care about it.”
While Obama has been forced to respond and counterpunch in tiffs started by McCain and the Republicans -- most recently over Obama's willingness to meet with leaders of countries that aren't necessarily friendly to the US -- Obama today struck first on the ongoing lobbyist purge inside McCain's campaign.
And wading back into the fight over whether negotiating with America’s enemies is “naïve,” as McCain claims, Obama argued today that McCain’s foreign policy is no different than President Bush’s.
“[McCain] has been spending the last week describing his foreign policy by explaining who he wont talk to,” Obama said. “I mean, that’s his whole foreign policy -- ‘I wont talk to that guy and I won’t talk to that guy, and I won’t talk to that guy.’ What kind of, that’s your foreign policy? He basically wants to perpetuate the same errors that George Bush has made for the last eight years that have cost us so dearly in blood and treasure and has not made us more safe.”
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds fired back with this statement: “Despite his own campaign’s ties to lobbyists, nothing comes between Barack Obama and a partisan political attack. In Senator Obama’s world, lobbyists can raise money and advise his campaign on policy issues, their families can contribute but supposedly they have no role. It’s absurd, despite his own rhetoric, Senator Obama still refuses to disclose the list of lobbyists advising his campaign. What is Senator Obama hiding?
"John McCain has an unmatched record of fighting the influence of special interests in Washington. The McCain campaign has implemented the strictest policy against lobbyists in presidential campaign history, and we challenge Senator Obama to meet our standard.”
