Palin again hammers Obama over Ayers
Posted: Monday, October 06, 2008 4:55 PM by Carrie Dann
Filed Under:
Sarah Palin
From NBC/NJ's Matthew Berger
ESTERO, Fla. --
Gov. Sarah Palin expanded her attack on
Barack Obama’s association with William Ayers Monday, suggesting the Democratic presidential candidate knew of Ayers’ ties to Weather Underground and saying Obama does not have the judgment or honesty to be president.
“Today they’re saying for the first time that Barack Obama didn’t know back then about Ayers’s radical background,” Palin told a rowdy crowd of 8,800 people at the Germain Arena. “But it was only a few months ago that Barack was saying that Ayers was just a ‘guy in my neighborhood.’”
Palin then began mockingly questioning that Obama “didn't know a few months ago that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?”
Video:
Speaking in Florida, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hammers Barack Obama over his association with William Ayers.
“So what’s next?” she said. “Claiming their ticket doesn’t define higher taxes as patriotic? Or claiming he’s just learned that tax increases on small business kill jobs? Claiming he’s just learned that American soldiers don’t actually target and kill civilians in Afghanistan?
"Or claiming he’s surprised that the surge and the war on terrorism is a success?,” she continued. “Oh wait, he’s already done that.”
*** UPDATE *** The Obama campaign strenuously objects to Palin's rhetorically asking if Obama has just learned "that American soldiers don't actually target and kill civilians in Afghanistan." As we pointed out early today, this is what Obama said in August: "We've got to get the job done [in Afghanistan] and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.” And the AP fact-checked that Western forces there "have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians."
While she stayed away from saying she was fearful of Obama, as she had earlier in the day in Clearwater, Palin suggested Obama was unfit to lead the country.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that pattern, this is about the truthfulness and judgment needed in our next president,” she said. “John McCain has it, Barack Obama doesn’t have it.”
The McCain campaign had released an earlier version of the remarks, in which she said Obama had “launched his political career in the living room of a convicted domestic terorirst.” But that was incorrect – Ayers was never convicted; federal riot and conspiracy charges against him were dropped because of illegal wiretaps and prosecutorial misconduct.
The campaign corrected the prepared remarks, and Palin did not refer to Ayers as “convicted” in her remarks.
Palin came to the rally from two fundraisers in Naples, including one at the waterfront home of Jack Donahue, founder of Federated Investors. There, she called for tax cuts for businesses and spoke of the current market slump.
“If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you’re gonna see that, ya, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn’t understand,” she said, according to a pool report. “No! Especially in a time like this you don’t propose to increase taxes and grow government, not at this time.”
At the rally – where she was joined by Sen. Mel Martinez and Gov. Charlie Crist - Palin said she would “start telling the truth about what a candidate stands for.”
“And perhaps some of the things that I'm going to be doing and saying, I'll do my best you know to kind of fit in there,” she said. “Well not really to fit in there -- well how about this? I'll do my best to keep giving material to Tina Fey to keep her in business."
