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Tom DeLay: Hillary will be next president 
Also says Obama's record in Illinois Senate on par with a 'Marxist leftist'


Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said today that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) would be elected president in 2008 and would probably tap Senate colleague Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) as her running mate.

DeLay met with conservative bloggers at a weekly lunch meeting hosted by HUMAN EVENTS and the Heritage Foundation. He is making the rounds in Washington to promote his new blog and activism website, TomDeLay.com.

DeLay said he was motivated to start the blog and create the Grassroots Action and Information Network after observing the success of liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org, the Media Fund and Americans Coming Together. He said he hopes to utilize some of the same tools to help Republicans win elections.

It’s this liberal coalition, working in concert with the news media, that will propel Clinton to the White House in 2008, DeLay said. “Hillary will be the next president of the United States because they have built a coalition,” he said.

DeLay also implored conservatives to start digging into Obama’s past. He said Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate was on par with a “Marxist leftist.” Citing defeated U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford of Tennessee, DeLay said Obama was attempting to disguise his liberal views. (Read Amanda Carpenter’s report on Obama {next post} and his conflicting rhetoric. {third post} )

DeLay named Clinton loyalists Harold Ickes, Sidney Blumenthal, James Carville, Paul Begala and Joe Lockhart as the masterminds behind the left-wing coalition. He said that these groups, more than anything else, contributed to the GOP’s fall this November. “I have never seen a more powerful coalition,” he said.

One such example of the coalition’s power played out precisely as planned in California’s 11th District. Republican Rep. Richard Pombo was toppled after facing an onslaught of attacks from the left.

DeLay said his goal in creating the new organization is to turn ideas into action. He said he will reach out to the diverse coalition of conservative groups and bring them together to rival the coalition built by liberals. Prior to the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, DeLay said he employed a similar strategy that the GOP has gradually abandoned.

One day after launching the new website, DeLay said he’s had 100 people pay the $52 per year to join the Grassroots Action and Information Network.

Barack Obama Is Just Another Liberal

As Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) gathers increasing attention as a potential rival to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, remarkably little attention has been paid to his record, which reveals him to be at least as liberal as Hillary.

While Obama has a knack for portraying himself as an even-handed politician, who is inspired by traditional religious values, he has earned 100% ratings from Americans for Democratic Action, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Organization of Women, the NAACP and the NEA.

Hedged Rhetoric

To drum up support for his Senate bid in 2004, Obama wrote a letter to the Windy City Times, a publication targeted to Chicago’s gay community. “I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed, and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor,” he vowed. “I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying” (see page 3).

Obama told the paper that constitutional marriage amendment proposals were merely “an effort to demonize people for political advantage.” At the same time, he pledged to work to “expand adoption rights” for same-sex couples.

In 2006, he followed through by voting against the Federal Marriage Amendment. “Personally, I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said, as he voted against defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Obama has similarly hedged his pro-choice rhetoric, while consistently supporting the pro-choice cause. As a state senator in Illinois he twice voted “present” on an Illinois ban on partial-birth abortion and was “absent” on a third vote. In 2001, he voted “present” on a parental notification bill for minors and in 2002 he voted against a bill to protect babies that survived failed abortions.

In his 2004 race Senate, Obama accepted $41,750 in campaign contributions from pro-choice interest groups.

These positions contrast with the Christian faith to which he frequently refers in public appearances. Obama’s father, a Muslim who abandoned his faith for atheism, divorced Barack’s mother when Barack was two. In his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, Barack said that his mother’s parents were a non-practicing Baptist and a non-practicing Methodist. She “grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself,” he said. “As a consequence so did I.”

After his mother remarried, Obama lived in Indonesia with his stepfather, who was conscripted into the Indonesian Army. He first attended a Catholic school there, then a Muslim school.

“In both cases,” he writes in his new book, The Audacity of Hope, “my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.”

Supporting Socialism

As an Illinois senator, Obama introduced the “Bernardin Amendment,” which would have inserted language from a pastoral letter by the late Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin into a universal health care program. The amendment contained Bernardin’s line: “Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person is able to realize that right.” The bill, which did not pass, was to be funded with money taken from tobacco companies.

Obama spoke of his faith in his keynote address at the 2006 Call to Renewal’s “Building a Covenant for a New America” conference. He said that if it wasn’t for the “particular attributes” of the black church, he may have never have become part of it. “Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principles,” he said.

In the same speech, he asked Christians, Jews and Muslims to convene on Capitol Hill and give an “injection of morality” by opposing a repeal of the estate tax.

When speaking out against various tax cuts, Obama has likened the “Ownership Society”—which entails such things as personalized Social Security accounts, health savings accounts and school choice—to “social Darwinism.” In a November 2005 speech to the National Women’s Law Center, he said: “The idea here is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up into some tax breaks, hand them out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own unemployment insurance, education, and so forth.”

“In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society,” Obama explained. “But in our past there has been another term for it—social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself.”

As an Illinois state legislator, Obama also supported raising taxes on insurance premiums and on casino patrons, retaining the state death tax and levying a new tax on businesses.

He voted against a bill that would add penalties for crimes committed as a part of gang activity and against a bill that would make it a criminal offense for accused gang members, free on bond or probation, to associate with other gang members. In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a bill that prohibited early prison release for criminal sexual offenders.

In 2001, he voted “present” on a measure to keep pornographic books and video stores 1,000 feet away from schools and churches, and in 1999, he voted against a requirement to make schools filter internet pornography from school computers.

Obama has spoken against the Iraq War since its inception, beginning with an October 2002 speech he gave alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He went so far as to suggest that the war was a ploy to distract voters from domestic issues impacting minorities.

“What I am opposed to is the attempt by potential hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty state, a drop in the medium income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone thorough the worst month since the Great Depression,” he said. “That’s what I am opposed to.”

Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope that although he believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, coveted nuclear arms, scoffed at UN resolutions and butchered his own people, he sensed “the threat Saddam posed was not imminent” and “the administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven.”

In November 2003, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that if he were in the Senate he would not have voted for the President’s $87.5 billion supplemental appropriations package for Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think it enables the Bush Administration to continue on a flawed policy without being accountable to the American people or to the troops who are making sacrifices,” he said.

His opposition to the war carries through today in his support for the call by Sen. Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq four to six months after its enactment.

Obama Turns Two Faces to America

Since his much-hyped initial Senate campaign two years ago, Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) has been portrayed by the liberal media as a political populist who has the potential to unite polarized Republicans and Democrats in a national election.

In his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama played up this image himself. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into Red States and Blue States—Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats,” he said. “But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an ‘awesome God’ in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States, and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

Citing rhetoric like this, commentators have suggested that Obama is “purple” because he combines “red” conservative values with a “blue” liberal political base. In fact, a close examination of Obama’s public statements reveals not a closet conservative, but a typical politician highly adept at speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

RED-STATE HYPE
Gay Marriage

"And I should say that, personally, I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman." -- Floor statement on the Federal Marriage Amendment (which he opposed), June 5, 2006

BLUE-STATE PUNCH LINE
Gay Marriage

"Since 1996, I have been the sponsor or a chief co-sponsor of measures to expand civil liberties for the LGBT community, including hate-crimes legislation, adoption rights and the extension of basic civil rights to protect LGBT persons from discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and credit… For the record I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. This is an effort to demonize people for political advantage, and should be resisted.” – Letter to the Windy City Times, Feb. 11, 2004


RED-STATE HYPE
Welfare

“The people I meet – in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks – they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.” -- Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, July 27, 2004

BLUE-STATE PUNCH LINE
Welfare

"I made sure our new welfare system didn't punish people by kicking them off the rolls." -- Hyde Park Citizen, Sept. 30, 1999


RED-STATE HYPE
Race

“There is not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and an Asian America – there’s a United States of America.” – Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, July 27, 2004


BLUE-STATE PUNCH LINE
Race

“I am personally interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I’m fairly opinionated about this.” – The New York Times, Feb. 6, 1990


RED-STATE HYPE
Taxes

“At a time when ordinary families are feeling hit from all sides, the impulse to keep their taxes as low as possible is honorable and right.” – The Audacity of Hope, pg. 191


BLUE-STATE PUNCH LINE
Taxes

“I consider the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be both fiscally irresponsible and morally troubling.” -- The New York Times, Feb. 6, 1990


RED-STATE HYPE
Guns

“Whenever I could, I would try to share my perspectives I was hearing from portions of the electorate: the legitimate role of faith in politics, say, or the deep cultural meaning of guns in rural parts of the state.” – The Audacity of Hope, pg. 114


BLUE-STATE PUNCH LINE
Guns

“National legislation will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons law from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.” – Chicago Tribune, Feb. 20, 2004