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| March 3, 2008 |
| McCain's "Straight Talk Express" Runs Over Right-Wing Radio Host; Limbaugh May Be Next |
| By Kevin McCauley |
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John McCain threw me under the bus, squawked right-wing Cincinnati talk show host Bill Cunningham, who had a grand time trashing Barack Obama at a Republican campaign event yesterday. He sure got that right.
Wild Bill whipped the audience into a frenzy by repeatedly referring to Christian Obama as the proud owner of a fine Muslim name, Hussein (his middle name). He went on to belittle the Democratic front-runner as nothing more than a “hack, Chicago-style Daley politician.”
 Gentleman John, who claims he wasn’t aware before-hand of the “red meat” line, repudiated Cunningham’s comments.
The event made grand political theater as Cunningham – who now, like Ann Coulter, is backing Hillary Clinton as the true conservative in the race for the White House – drew support from other talk show windbags such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
This blogger thinks the whole shebang was a brilliant but staged event. Sister Souljah immediately comes to mind. She was (is) the hip-hop artist whom Bill Clinton used as a prop to capture the support of right-leaning voters.
In a master stroke, Clinton used a 1992 speech at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition to attack Sister S. for saying in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people.”
Clinton floored the Rainbow group by linking Souljah to David Duke, founder of Louisiana’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Said Clinton: “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”
The former Commander-in-Chief was roundly criticized by Jackson and other African-Americans. Sister S. accused him of being a racist and hypocrite.
Clinton's statement performed its magic. It positioned Clinton as a centrist (vs. liberal) politico who is tough on crime. He won the Presidency with the support of right-leaning Democrats and law-&-order independent types. Clinton, of course, knew he had the black vote in the bag.
McCain used Cunningham for a reverse “Souljah Moment.” The Arizona Republican knows that he is never going to win the backing of hard-core conservatives, so why bother?
He needs the support of independents, a group Hussein is counting on to punch his ticket to the White House. The last thing independent voters want to see is Big John pandering to the likes of Cunningham and Limbaugh.
Throwing both of them under the bus is just smart politics for McCain. |
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