Comments on: Obama: U.S. Must Eradicate Gun Violence

Democratic Candidate Also Says He Believes In An Individual's Right To Bear Arms

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The Grand Old (White) Party Confronts Obama
By FRANK RICH

THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it%u2019s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

Senator Obama%u2019s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain%u2019s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols, played the past to Mr. Obama%u2019s here and now. Mr. McCain looked like a loser even though he, unlike Senator Clinton, had actually won.

But he has it even worse than Mrs. Clinton. What distinguished his posse from Mr. Obama%u2019s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male. Such has been the inescapable Republican brand throughout this campaign, ever since David Letterman memorably pegged its lineup of presidential contenders last spring as %u201Cguys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.%u201D

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For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan %u201CI am fired up and ready to go%u201D in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s %u2014 or Mitt Romney%u2019s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King%u2019s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.

The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven%u2019t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama vanquished the Democratic field, including a presidential-looking Southern white man with an enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment is now almost ho-hum.

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Given that the American story has been so inextricable from the struggle over race, the Obama triumph has been the bigger surprise to many. Perhaps because I came of age in the racially divided Washington public schools of the 1960s and had one of my first newspaper jobs in Richmond in the early 1970s, I almost had to pinch myself when Mr. Obama took 52 percent of Virginia%u2019s white vote last week. The Old Dominion continues to astonish those who remember it when.

Here%u2019s one of my memories. In 1970, Linwood Holton, the state%u2019s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a Richard Nixon supporter, responded to court-ordered busing by voluntarily placing his own children in largely black Richmond public schools. For this symbolic gesture, he was marginalized by his own party, which was hellbent on pursuing the emergent Strom Thurmond-patented Southern strategy of exploiting white racism for political gain. After Mr. Holton, Virginia restored to office the previous governor, Mills Godwin, a champion of the state%u2019s %u201Cmassive resistance%u201D to desegregation.

Today Anne Holton, the young daughter sent by her father to a black school in Richmond, is the first lady of Virginia, the wife of the Democratic governor, Tim Kaine. Mr. Kaine%u2019s early endorsement of Mr. Obama was a potent factor in his remarkable 28-point landslide on Tuesday.

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Posted by rudy654 at 04:01 PM : Feb 16, 2008

Why thank you rudy!:)

[thcarson-2009]

Guns will never be outlawed in the USA because it would cause the next civil war. Do you honestly believe the millions of gun owners like myself would simply hand over our weapons? Before you say the military would enforce this you have to realize not all of our leaders would agree 100 percent on this decision nor would all of the military leaders and members, it would be chaos. On second thought it might be a good thing as we could rid our country of all the liberal socialist scum that are ruining this country.

[pakaal]

nutsie11: "How do you anti-gun people live with yourselves?"

By not shooting each other, thanks for asking.

[pakaal]

payasyougo: "You want to stop gun voilence, fix our educational system so it doesn''''t keep turning out hoodlums and killers."

Riiiight, because in classrooms throughout the US all kids today are being taught that they should become hoodlums and killers.

How about parents stop foisting their own problems teaching their kids right from wrong on teachers? How about them getting themselves and their kids out from behind the TV screen and into the real world for a change? How about they take the time to do family activities and socialize their kids for a change?

Teachers have enough time trying to keep up with the No Child Left Untested curriculum some numbskulls in Washington came up with, to act as surrogate parents as well, even though many try the best they can to help their students out.

No responsible parent would ever prefer to let their kid''s teachers be the ones to teach their kids right from wrong.

[pilgrimsway-2009]

I am very proud of Obama! Why because He plans to help and support more than any other president by far third world countries. How, by using our economy to do this. The people in America on our city streets, the people with no hope, the people who cannot afford food week to week, the people who have no housing, the people with large families, the people with no jobs right here in America will sponsor Obama to help people in other countries. This is beyond belief if He was to be elected by people who need the help themselves in which they do not understand that He will give their help away to someone in another country!

[payasyougo]

You want to stop gun voilence, fix our educational system so it doesn''t keep turning out hoodlums and killers.

[realpatriot1]

hopetrumps,

The logical extension of your argument would be that any attack on George Bush is male bashing.

You have a brain, learn to use it.