Obama standing up for his woman. Is this an empty threat? What exactly is going to do if people don't lay off his wife?
Obama to Tennessee GOP: My Wife is Off-Limitsby FOXNews.com
Monday, May 19, 2008
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama is crying foul play to the Tennessee Republican Party for using a quote made by his wife in a new video it released last week.
In the four-minute video now available on YouTube, Michelle Obama is shown delivering a a February speech in which she says, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” The ad then quotes Nashville voters asking them to list the reasons they are proud of their country.
Asked about the video, the Democratic presidential candidate told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that the ad is “low class,” warned that the Tennessee GOP
“should be careful” and said he finds it “unacceptable” for them to use his wife in an video.
“The GOP, should I be the nominee, can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record,” Obama said, with his wife sitting next to him.
“If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.”In a news release that included a link to the video, Tennessee’s GOP said “the Tennessee Republican Party has always been proud of America.” It urged radio stations to play “patriotic music” during Michelle Obama’s visit to Nashville last Thursday.
Tennessee GOP Communications Director Bill Hobbs told FOXNews.com that the party was “kicking around some ideas what could we do to make a little noise” in advance of Michelle Obama’s fund-raising trip to the city. Hobbs said the idea was conceived and executed in a matter of hours, was produced in house with “a Sony handycam and a laptop,” and not a dollar was spent buying ad time for the video to air.
Hobbes said the video doesn’t criticize Michelle Obama at all, but merely raises an issue that had already been scrutinized by the public.
“We contrasted something she said in a public campaign speech at a public event that was covered by the news media,” Hobbes said. “It’s not like we’re the first people to raise this issue. We just made a light-hearted video. … Senator Obama has a pattern of requesting certain things that are uncomfortable to him as off-limits … She is on the campaign trail, so I don’t think she is off-limits. He sends her out to do campaign speeches and fundraisers, and then says we can’t criticize the things she says. I think that’s ridiculous.”
Michelle Obama first made the remark in February and repeated it a couple times at campaign events before later saying she meant she was proud of how Americans were engaging in the political process and that she had always been proud of her country.
“Whoever is in charge of the Tennessee GOP needs to think long and hard about the kind of campaign they want to run, and I think that’s true for everybody, Democrat or Republican,” Obama said in the ABC interview, adding: “These folks should lay off my wife.”
Obama said his wife “loves this country. For them to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her is, I think, just low class. I think that most of the American people would think that as well.”
Tennessee’s Republican Party was roundly criticized in March, including by likely presidential nominee John McCain, for a news release that used Barack Obama’s middle name — Hussein — and showed a photo of him wearing what it said was “Muslim attire.”
The release ultimately was removed from the party’s Web site at the urging of the state’s two Republican senators and Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, who said he “rejects these kinds of campaign tactics.”
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/19/obama-to-tennessee-gop-my-wife-is-off-limits/
