Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

One sign that Obama has an excellent chance of winning the Democratic nomination is that he is becoming the target of a number of ridiculous attacks from the right wing. Here’s a few of the latest.

Attack Number One: Obama can’t speak without a teleprompter

This one comes from Dean Barnett at the Daily Standard, which is already a clue that this one is nonsense. Dean claims that Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter:

Shorn of his Teleprompter, we saw a different Obama. His delivery was halting and unsure. He looked down at his obviously copious notes every few seconds throughout the speech. Unlike the typical Obama oration where the words flow with unparalleled fluidity, he stumbled over his phrasing repeatedly.

While we would expect the use of a teleprompter to make somewhat of a difference, Obama has spoken in public many times before without a teleprompter, making this one hard to believe. The video of Obama’s speech at the Virginia Jefferson-Jackson dinner shows that Barnett’s criticism doesn’t hold up:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUngQ8-wLU]

Besides, if we want to criticize politicians for their speaking style, check out George Bush, with or without a teleprompter.

Attack Number Two: The Che flag

There’s a Cuban flag with Che Guevara on the wall of an office in Barack Obama’s Houston campaign headquarters. This comes from a report on a Fox affiliate which actually reports, “The office featured in this video is funded by volunteers of the Barack Obama Campaign and is not an official headquarters for his campaign.” Although this flag has nothing to do with the campaign, many right wing blogs are claiming that this is a reflection on Obama. James Joyner presents a run down of conservative blog reports on this:

• Ed Morrissey: “A Flag Obama Supporters Salute?”

• Charles Johnson: “Che Guevara Flags in Obama’s Houston Office”

• Texas Communists For Obama (Apparently They Were Out of Himmler)

• Matt Bramanti: “Obama office adores psychotic Marxist thug”

• Ed Driscoll: “Sixties Radical Chic, Frozen In Amber”

• Curt@Flopping Aces and Don Surber weigh in with “Che Obama”

• Michael Goldfarb: “Che You Can Believe In”

Attack Number Three: The High Tax Candidate

National Review distorts Obama’s tax policies to exaggerate the tax increases and claim he would raise taxes more than Clinton:

This is disturbing news on the taxation front. The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore says Obama’s tax plan would add up to a 39.6 percent personal income tax, a 52.2 percent combined income and payroll tax, a 28 percent capital-gains tax, a 39.6 percent dividends tax, and a 55 percent estate tax. In other words, Sen. Obama is a very-high-tax candidate. Whether Wall Street has fully discounted this, I have no idea. Probably not yet. But somebody in the investor class ought to be thinking about it, because it’s not good.

Interestingly, at least two of Obama’s top economic advisors — Austan Goolsbee and Jeffrey Liebman — are highly regarded free-market economists. Goolsbee from Chicago, Liebman from Harvard. But somehow their candidate has a very punitive high-tax campaign plan for the economy.

The first important fact that this leaves out is, as The New Republic points out, “This year, the top marginal rate applies only to income above $349,701.” Conservatives are tying to scare many voters who wouldn’t be impacted. Another error is that these numbers assume that Obama would totally eliminate the Social Security cap, but Obama has not advocated this. He has discussed possibly raising the cap, and has also discussed including a donut hole so that those earning under $250,000 wouldn’t be affected. It is also erroneous to claim that Obama supports higher taxes than Clinton as both are advocating rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, and both have discussed the possibility of increasing the Social Security cap.