Stephen Dinan
Sen. Barack Obama
SEE RELATED:
Sen. John McCain
Sen. Barack Obama yesterday said his Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has previewed every attack Republicans can use against him in the fall general election - and Sen. John McCain’s comments proved him right.\
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“I’m sure that Senator Clinton feels like she’s doing me a great favor, because she’s been deploying most of the arguments that the Republican Party will be using against me in November, so it’s toughening me up,” Mr. Obama told newspaper executives at the Associated Press annual luncheon, going into great detail on many of the attacks.\
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Hours earlier, speaking to the same audience, Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama made “elitist” comments when he told a San Francisco fundraiser that rural voters are “bitter” over poor economic times, which the Illinois senator said drive them to “cling” to guns, religion and anti-immigrant and anti-trade sentiments.\
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“These are the people that produce a generation that made the world safe for democracy. These are the people that today, their sons and daughters are in harm’s way, defending this nation. These are the people that have fundamental cultural, spiritual and other values that in my view have very little to do with their economic condition but has everything to do what Tocqueville said America was all about 200 years ago and is the same today,” the Arizona senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee said.\
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He stopped short of calling Mr. Obama himself an elitist, but Mr. McCain’s campaign struck hard, distributing a fundraising e-mail saying the remarks reveal an “elitist philosophy” and saying Mr. Obama is “a guy who thinks the whole country is worried about the high price of arugula or that you hunt ducks with a six shooter.”
here
a short piece
— Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter, The Washington Times
