The Political Chase

Hillary’s lasting success in West Virginia

(Updated below)

The Los Angeles Times illustrates today how much the people of West Virginia oppose, to put it mildly, Barack Obama. Hatred of blacks existed in West Virginia long before Barack Obama came into the picture and no one could reasonably argue that many of these bigots would ever vote for any African-American running for president. And thanks to Hillary Clinton, the basis of the hatred has expanded. West Virginians now see Obama as a black elitist, Qur’an-swearing-Muslim, that is committed to taking their guns away.

West Virginians are not citing Obama’s policies as the reason they will not vote for Obama, but instead, they repeat what Clinton has repeated ad nauseam, directly and indirectly, through her campaign.

The concerns of party members…mirror those of many white Democrats nationwide: Some fear voters will be turned off by Obama’s black heritage. Others, they say, will find reason to doubt his patriotism or will perceive him to be an elitist. . . .

Neil Gillies, an Obama supporter who runs a local environmental nonprofit group, glumly recounted the gibes that his wife, a schoolteacher, hears regularly from her students. “They’re convinced [Obama] is a Muslim, a terrorist, a guy who’s coming to take away their guns,” Gillies said. “It’s just sad.”. . .

The [hand-painted yard sign with "Osama, Obama and Chelsea's Mama" on it] belongs to Eric Hardy, 38, a former Democrat who works at a woodworking plant. Now a die-hard Republican and president of the West Virginia Coon Hunters Assn., Hardy opposes any Democrat “who wants to go after my guns.”

Obama “takes the cake,” he said, “because of, you know, who he is.” He suspects Obama for his “Muslim name,” and comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., rankle him. “He’s just a mistake any way you look at him,” Hardy said.

But you say, “David, Hillary hasn’t called Obama a Muslim!” Indeed she has, indirectly and repeatedly, throughout her campaign. The Farrakhan remark in the last debate is just one example.

In fact, McClatchy presents a rather convincing case in a May 8 piece that the Hillary campaign participated in a January 2007 effort to nationally publicize a former CIA officer’s project to demonize Obama.

One [political amateur] in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name.

In late 2006, convinced that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for America, he decided to start an anti-Obama operation. He combed the public record on Obama. He used a couple of allies and informants — half-jokingly dubbing his group “The Crusaders” — to learn about Obama’s background, especially his Africa connection and how he came to be the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He assembled a dossier on Obama, including allegations that Obama attended a madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in his youth in Indonesia.

Then the retired spook tried to get Israeli intelligence officials interested in his Obama dossier. They weren’t, to his chagrin. He also shopped it to some foreign reporters. Again, no luck.

He wound up posting some of it on a blog — and where it went from there in the vast world of cyberspace is anybody’s guess.

But a few months after the man began his work, the allegation that Obama was educated in a madrassa appeared in an anonymous article in Insight Magazine, an online publication of the Unification Church, in January 2007. It also claimed that Clinton operatives had dug up the information. The article was cited by several conservative commentators, including on Fox News, before it was debunked.

The piece had the markings of what’s called a “false-flag” operation: Make a covert operation appear to be the work of another party. And, like many misinformation campaigns, it “takes what you might believe without any factual basis and seen circulating around …a lot of speculation spun into a story,” said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA official.

Hillary’s done great things to ensure the future success of the Democratic Party.

On a side note, I wonder if the unidentified retired CIA agent is Larry Johnson — a well known and avid Hillary supporter.

Update 5/11, 11:21 AM: Larry Johnson left a comment saying that he had nothing to do with smearing Obama. I have to take him at his word, which seems to be limited to foul language and name calling that is not fit for public consumption. I removed his post and have banned him from the site.

Johnson’s participation here would be welcomed as long as it was civil, but apparently civil is a concept that eludes him.