The American Mind

Chunk by chunk Sen. Barack Obama’s Presidential brand of being above partisan politics is collapsing around him. The New Political Man has been caught fibbing about how far to the Left he is or claimed to have been in the past:

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer.

The Obama campaign actually had the gall to claim that even though his handwriting is on the questionnaire that doesn’t mean the answers were his. That’s taking “being above the partisan fray” too far. It’s like the campaign actually thinks Obama can walk on water.

In the questionnaire Obama supported such liberal shiboleths as:

• Comparable worth.
• Increasing the minimum wage.
• A single-payer health plan.
• Medicaid (ie. taxpayer) funding for abortion.
• Lifting the six month limit on getting General Assistance welfare.
• Stopping juveniles from being tried as adults.
• A ban on the manufacture and sale of handguns.

Macsmind reminds us Obama wants to cut defense spending especially in missile defense and “future combat systems.”

If you have about 30 minutes listen to Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discuss Obama’s first book Dreams of My Fathers. In it Obama is candid about how he sought meaning and a place through radical politics while in college. Throughout the clips he displays a hunger for place and purpose. It would explain why he put up with Jeremiah Wright for almost 20 years.

The more we learn about Obama the more we discover he’s a politician like most others. Throughout his career he’s wiggled and shook to get the interest group support needed to advance. New Political Man? Post-partisan politics? Ha!

“Obama Had Greater Role on Liberal Survey” [via Hot Air]