From OpEdNews.com: Rob Kall on McCain's nightmare surrogate.
July 14, 2008 – Washington (OpEdNews.com) – We've heard ten thousand times about how awful it is that Obama kept worshipping at the church led by just awful Reverend Wright, how he kept going for 20 years.
Well, it sure seems to me that McCain's decades long, close relationship with Phil Gramm, his most embraced economic advisor, signifies much worse than Obama's case.
You can be a member of a church and not have your minister speak for an represent you. You can be a member of a church and not have anything more than a brief conversation with your minister every few weeks.
But when you are the chief economic advisor on the campaign team, when you act as an official surrogate, speaking to audiences on behalf of your candidate, that is several quantum levels more involved, more connected to the candidate.
So we have Phil Gramm telling us the nation's economic problems are all in our head, that it's a "mental recession" and we're a nation of whiners.
This should be pretty easy math. You have a foolish, overly bombastic, self promoting pastor or you have an out of touch, let-them-eat cake, arrogant ADVISOR and official campaign surrogate and spokesperson who insults Americans and is clueless on the biggest challenge facing Americans, playing close advisor role to a candidate who has admitted he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to economics.
Which is worse?
Yet where's the comparison on the mainstream media? Why aren't we seeing in big, bold letters,
McCain's Gramm = Obama's Rev. Wright?
I'll tell you why. The Dems have not done any viral email campaigns. They don't have a horde of right wing sycophant media allies at Fox, CNN and the networks ginning out the meme, like was done for Wright.
And they have Carly Fiorina, saying that these people aren't important, nobody pays attention to them. Why do I recall the scene in the first Star Wars movie in which Obi Wan Kenobi hypnotizes the starship troopers, telling them, "We're not important"?
Sorry, Carly, but Senator Gramm is a direct representative, a formally delegated speaker for candidate McCain – the back-up and cover for his previous confessions of ignorance.
Gramm = Wright – that should be the message Obama's people push the next few days in every talking head moment they get. People will recognize the difference between a foolish minister and an offensively misguided advisor-spokesperson. Build them the idea, feed it to them and they will digest it.
And while we're at it, let's not forget Reverend Hagee, the Catholic hater whom McCain initially embraced, until he unembraced him. Oh… and Rev. Parsley, too!
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, an inventor , and political strategist.