Let’s play a game of “detect the pattern.”
Barack Obama, appearing on Larry King Live, last night: “Where Senator McCain I think is confused is the difference between tactics and strategy.”
The same day, Joe Biden on a campaign conference call: “As a consequence of their profound confusion [Bush and McCain] make profound mistakes.”
The liberal blog The Carpetbagger Report uses the word “confused” in almost every post about McCain; same deal at ThinkProgress. At AmericaBlog, the words “McCain” and “confused” have appeared together 108 times. DailyKos.com, hundreds.
Obama surrogate John Kerry, on a conference call June 11: “McCain confuses who Iran is training, he confuses what the makeup of Al Qaeda is, he confuses the history going back to 682 of what has happened to Sunni and Shia,” Kerry said.
Also on that call, Obama adviser Susan Rice cited a “pattern of confusing the basic facts and reality that pertain to Iraq.”
I’m sure it’s completely coincidental that when running against a 71-year-old, Obama, his advisers and his allies repeat the phrase “confused” like they have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Now imagine if John McCain and his campaign had said that Barack Obama’s campaign had become a Mecca of misguided advisers, that he can’t hide his liberal views under a veil of moderate rhetoric, that his Middle East policy proposals just aren’t Kosher, that Americans ought not put their faith in Obama’s prophet-like claim that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in sixteen months wouldn’t harm our national security or that either some or allah Obama’s ideas ought to be rethought.*
Somehow, one suspects many more would cry foul.
*None of this should be interpreted as an accusation that Obama is secretly a Muslim. As we all know, Obama spent twenty years as a member of a crazy Christian church where the pastors and visiting clergy denounce America.