Is Obama Buying Votes?
If you have a son our daughter, relative or friend who has bought into the hype about Barack Obama, you need to share this news with them. Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a candidate of hope and change. He wants to be seen as a symbol of reform and of a new politics of unity and bi-partisanship.
He talks a good game, but we have to remember that Obama is, first and foremost, a product of the Chicago political machine. He has associated himself with radicals like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. He has been praised by Louis Farrakhan and is followed by legions of “Che Guevara groupies.”
But have you heard of “street money”? There’s an old tradition in Democrat machine politics of turning out the vote with “street money” that is paid to local ward leaders and other supporters to go round up voters, wherever they can be found, on Election Day. To its credit, the Obama campaign reportedly didn’t pay “street money” during the April Pennsylvania primary, and guess what happened? He lost by ten points.
But, according to an article in yesterday’s Philadelphia Daily News, Obama’s operatives have decided to put their principles aside in order to guarantee a huge turnout in Philadelphia in November. The paper quotes Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA), a local party chairman, saying, “They told me there are going to be resources here. That’s what we do in Philadelphia; we pay people to work. They understand that.”
And then there is the socialist group ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. During his “community organizer” days, Obama worked very closely with ACORN in Chicago and served as its legal counsel, suing the state of Illinois on ACORN’s behalf in order to weaken voter registration laws. ACORN workers have been implicated in voter fraud cases in 13 states. ACORN’s political action committee endorsed Obama in February. No doubt much of Obama’s “street money” will find its way into the pockets of ACORN activists"
Gary Bauer
Campaign for Working Families
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