Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee running against Obama, then a Democratic senator from Illinois, found himself upbraiding some of his Obama’s critics and defending him.
As McClatchy National Political Correspondent David Lightman reports in this space, Guiliani, the former Republican mayor of New York, told a dinner audience in Manhattan Wednesday night: “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential Republican White House hopeful, sat nearby, mum.
Flash back to the 2008 presidential race, which had its own share of moments when critics of Obama’s candidacy became pretty fierce; some of it originating from the McCain campaign itself.
At a town hall in Minnesota, McCain told a supporter, “"I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
When audience members yelled “liar,” and “terrorist,” and a woman said that Obama was an “Arab,” the senator from Arizona said, “"No, ma'am. He's a decent family man…that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about."
McCain, no political ally of the president, did it again a year later when Obama was in the White House and the Congress and country were engaged in a fractious and often nasty debate over health care.
During a town hall in Arizona, an audience member said to McCain of the president: “Doesn't he know that we still live under a Constitution?"
“I am sure that he does and I'm sure he respects the Constitution," McCain replied. “…He is sincere in his beliefs, we just happen to disagree. And he is the president. And let's be respectful."
Comments