Flip-Flopping On Trade--The Fun Continues
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Flip-Flopping | Free Trade — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Here's Barack Obama's campaign today:
As presumptive Republican nominee McCain headed to Latin America today after an event in Indianapolis, the Obama camp hosted a conference call to criticize him for what it called failed trade policies.
On the call, Indiana House Majority Leader Russ Stilwell and former UAW Vice President Terry Thurman said McCain was committed to unfair trade policies that have hurt Indiana workers and resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs in the state.
"Just recently, Sen. McCain traveled to Canada to talk about his support for NAFTA and today, after he finishes his speech here in Indiana, he's hopping on a plane and going to Colombia and Mexico to talk about how much our trade agreements are going to help those countries rather than talking about what we can do to help this country," Thurman said. "I find it no surprise that he's gonna go to Mexico to talk (sic) how great NAFTA is because he is certainly not gonna find much support for it in the Hoosier State."
And here was Barack Obama just a little over a week ago:
The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.
Someone forgot to remind the Obama campaign that they should refrain from "overheated and amplified" rhetoric. They certainly engaged in such rhetoric today. By the way, if you want to see how trade has helped Indiana--and why Indianans would be in favor of free trade absent efforts to obscure the issue via demagoguery--you need only read this.
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Flip-Flopping On Trade--The Fun Continues 2 Comments (0 topical, 2 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Even though I dislike Indiana University which took the name for itself, residents of Indiana are properly called Hoosiers.
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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Is why in God's name McCain and others aren't using this information to expose Obama and the dems for the shameless demagogues that they are. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out.