Bill Cunningham is a Fool (But we already knew that)

There has been a small kafuffle over the remarks that Bill Cunningham made while warming up the crowd at a John McCain rally down in Music Hall. Those of us who live around Cincinnati are familiar with Mr. Cunningham’s style. Essentially, he is an elitist blowhard who will say just about anything to drive up his name recognition. Mrs. X thinks that his ultimate goal is to get his own talk show on Fox News. But at the moment he is stuck doing a local radio show that is broadcast nationally on occasion.

Anyway, Mr. Cunningham talked in a rather disparaging manner about Mr. Obama. That in and of itself is not surprising. However, Mr. Cunningham also referred to Mr. Obama as Barak Hussein Obama at least three times. Yes, Hussein is Mr. Obama’s legal middle name, but the use of this name in a repeated message was clearly intended as an attack. People only use middle names if they need to differentiate between people with similar names, they are being excessively formal, or they are trying to make a point about something. In this case, most people agree that Mr. Cunningham (despite his denials) was intending to call attention to Mr. Obama’s Muslim roots through his father. Mr. Cunningham and many people like him have attempted to use this in an attempt to portray Mr. Obama as an Islamic Trojan Horse that will sell the American People to the jihadists after he is sworn into office. Quite frankly, the jihadists are making inroads into this country well enough that they don’t need a Presidential Trojan Horse even if Mr. Obama was one (and I’m quite sure he is not).

Mr. McCain quickly refuted Mr. Cunningham’s intro, much to Mr. Cunningham’s chagrin. Whatever one thinks of Mr. McCain, this was the best course of action to take. Mr. Obama’s record indicates that he would be the most liberal candidate since George McGovern. However, he also has the speaking ability and charisma of John F. Kennedy. If Mr. McCain is able to keep the campaign relatively smear free and focus on the issues, he is likely to win. The general public is not going to accept nearly $300 billion in additional spending in addition to the growing social security debt without a method to pay for it. Mr. Obama’s proposed methods would bring in $170 billion at best and that is a very optimistic view of the situation.

However, if the campaign devolves into issues of character and an appeal to people’s emotions, Mr. Obama will win. Mr. Obama will try to make it about character. He’ll throw enough information about his proposed programs in there to keep away the claims that he doesn’t know what he is doing, but he’ll be able to sit there and promote vision and new direction against a curmudgeony old man and clean his clock.

There’ll be a little pain for Mr. McCain in the short run, but in the long run, it’s a better move to keep things clean. Let’s just see how long things can stay that way on both the Right and the Left.