The power of one
The Weekly Standard reports on the difference one person can make:
Pamela Key does not work for the Republican National Committee. She has no formal training in journalism. An illustrator of children’s books, she never finished college. And yet, her oppositional research, her investigative journalism, and her philosophical convictions have all come together to shape the national mood, receiving even the attention of the White House. On August 4 of this year, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House, released a video where she instructed the public, “My job is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this,” she reads the Drudge Report from her computer screen, “‘Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate PRIVATE Insurance.'”
What most don’t know is that Douglass was targeting a video unearthed by Key, first released on her video news website, Naked Emperor News, and then picked up by the Drudge Report. The video, which pieces together various Obama statements, damningly quotes the president at an SEIU forum in 2007 saying, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out.”
That is a truly damning quote, and this is why so many people wonder just how left wing is Obama.
Looking through the archives of Chicago’s public radio stations, of C-Span, of YouTube, and various other forums, Key uncovered clips of Obama saying cap and trade will bankrupt coal plants, of Van Jones calling for a revolution against “suicidal, gray capitalism,” and of congressional democrats refusing to regulate and audit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004. In one of her most viewed videos, which received nearly three million hits, Obama advocates for redistribution of wealth. In that 2001 Chicago public radio interview, Obama tells a radio talk show host, “One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was [the] tendency to lose track of political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” To this effect, he criticizes the radical Warren court (1953-1969) as not being radical enough: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution generally, the constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what states can’t do to you, says what federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”
Again, this is superb research from one person. Who knew Obama thought the Warren court was not radical enough.