Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

I ripped into Barack Obama’s utter disdain of firearms and his desire for blanket bans on entire classes of firearms in a post for Pajamas Media back on February 22. The article, Obama Shooting Himself in the Foot with Anti-Gun Stance, noted:

In his answers to the 1998 Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test, Obama said he favored a ban on “the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.”

By definition, this would include all pistols ever made, from .22 target pistols used in the Olympics to rarely-fired pistols kept in nightstands and sock drawers for the defense of families, and every pistol in between. Obama’s strident stand would also ban all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, whatever their previously legal purpose.

Obama’s desire to ban all semi-automatic firearms (including those most commonly used for hunting and target shooting) and all handguns are positions well to the left of mainstream American views, as are many of the other political positions he took in the 1998 survey.

Running as a moderate and inclusive presidential candidate a decade later, Obama has tried to explain away his leftist positions on that survey, and an earlier 1996 survey, as being the work of campaign aides who misstated his positions.

The Politico bursts that explanation this morning, in a report that notes that Obama himself answered questions in an interview with the group that created the 1996 questionnaire, and even included the candidate’s hand-written notes on an amended version of their questionnaire.

Some members of IVI-IPO, the group that authored the 1996 survey, are not happy with Obama’s changing views.

The group had endorsed Obama in every race he’d run — including his failed long-shot 2000 primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) — until now.

The group’s 37-member board of directors, meeting last year soon after Obama distanced himself from the first questionnaire, stalemated in its vote over an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. Forty percent supported Obama, 40 percent sided with Clinton and 20 percent voted for other candidates or not to endorse.

“One big issue was: Does he or does he not believe the stuff he told us in 1996?” said Aviva Patt, who has been involved with the IVI-IPO since 1990 and is now the group’s treasurer. She volunteered for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, but voted to endorse the since-aborted presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and professed disappointment over Obama’s retreat from ownership of the questionnaire.

Other members of the group still support Obama, but it frankly doesn’t matter.

Barack Obama has tried to package himself this time around as a uniting, moderating force in American politics, but his dozen-year long record from 1996 through his current Senate ranking as America’s most liberal Senator shows him to be well to the left of mainstream positions not only among Americans in general, but even within the Democratic Party.

Instead of running on his liberal views, Barack Obama is trying to minimize the public’s exposure to them without refuting his still-held radical beliefs, just as he’s tried to run away from his relationship to a radical Marxism-inspired church with a bigoted, America-damning pastor without quitting the church or severing his relationship with Wright, just as he has not refuted his dinner-party friendship and board of directors relationship with a proud terrorist who lost his girlfriend in the group when she blew herself up trying to create bombs to target a dance for American soldiers.

Far from being a uniting force in American politics, Barack Obama has shown himself time and again to be a shifty radical attempting to lie his way into higher office. Unfortunately, his hope of surviving the general election un-vetted by the media and his opponents is falling apart.

Amusingly, the superdelegate system that Democrats created to avoid another embarrassing McGovern-type landslide defeat is primed to fail in it’s primary mission by nominating another left-wing radical with little chance of winning, and a real possibility of suffering another embarrassing landslide defeat once the gloves come off in the general election.

I can hardly wait.