bleechers's Blog

Washington Post: Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama's earlier pledge to "aggressively pursue" an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take.

New York Times: Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue... In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system. But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now. And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style.


Change We Can Believe In

After contradicting his promise (and going against the spirit of two bills he co-sponsored in the Senate) concerning public campaign financing... Obama is now rethinking his stance on NAFTA:


--In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA. "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy. Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.-- [wsj.com]



Well, maybe there is "hope" is his campaign after all!



UPDATE: Whoops! He may have changed his mind again! It's hard to keep up with the guy's "rock solid beliefs."