Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits."This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president."And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said.
"You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."
Obama also denied his campaign was directly involved. Although, since the attacks started at Daily KOS, which has as it's members several of the Democratic leadership, including Senator Harry Reid, it's really hard to explain why he waited 3 days to denounce this -- they started with the "Palin's kid had a child" lies last Friday.
The Democratic presidential nominee said, "There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us. I hope I am as clear as can be – so in case I’m not, let me repeat: We don't go after people's families, we don't get them involved in the politics. It's not appropriate and it's not relevant."
Concluded Obama before getting on his campaign bus headed to Milwaukee, Wisc., "Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they'd be fired."
I think, just like with the Wilson/Plame thing, we need an independent counsel to question every member of Obama's staff, just so we can find out who among them supported this rumor so Obama can fire them.
But in fact, nobody will ever be fired over these scurilous attacks.
UPDATE: Redstate makes a very important point I forgot which makes Obama's attempts to distance his campaign seem hollow:
When Hillary Clinton supporters started questioning whether Obama actually was born in the United States, who published the birth certificate?Daily Kos did. Barack Obama sent it to Daily Kos to get it out there. They have a close relationship, the campaign and website do.
When Barack Obama wanted to reach out to the netroots, where did he go to blog?At Daily Kos.
What site does Barack Obama have in his RSS reader?Daily Kos.
Barack Obama himself admits he reads Daily Kos
The first point is the most damning. Obama used Daily Kos as an official source of information for his campaign. Having done so, he can't really pretend he had no knowledge of what they were saying about Palin's children, and he had an obligation to denounce the DailyKos posts and distance his campaign from their lies and disgusting attacks.
But he did nothing of the sort, even in this denunciation. DailyKos is a part of the Obama campaign, just not officially (convenient to violate campaign finance laws which Obama has little interest in anyway).
Update #2: This is an excellent test of Obama's leadership capabilities, and he has failed. TO the degree you believe Obama was sincerely telling his party and his supporters to knock it off, it seems they have no interest in following his lead, as the attacks on Bristol Palin continue unabated.
Obama is no leader -- he can't even get his own supporters to do what is clearly right when he comes right out and screams it at them. Obama only looks like a leader when he occasionally is pointed to where the front of the mob is and runs there.
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