Krehbiel Commentary

Too Progressive gives us the scoop (actually just links to the YouTube where Andrea Mitchell gives us the scoop).  One of the meatiest nuggets that conservatives have found in Obama's overseas junket to reinforce their "Hussein" fantasies is that he snubbed wounded troops !! in Germany.  I myself wondered why Obama's campaign would do something so politically disasterous.  Funny story... Mitchell reports that the military told him he couldn't visit.  This is where I begin to speculate of course, but obviously high-ranking military officials (undoubtedly Republican supporters) wanted to give him a political black eye on an otherwise pristine photo op tour.  Ah, politics.  The never-ending struggle to influence gullible bloggers voters.

UPDATE 7/26: The game continues... SWAC Girl tries to rebut using evidence from a story issued the day before Andrea Mitchell's report on Morning Joe. That's not very convincing to this observer.

UPDATE 7/27:  Now the McCain campaign is jumping into the fray with a new ad about this, undoubtedly because they saw how much traction the story was getting with conservatives.  For some weird reason, McCain thinks the accompanying "facts" on his campaign web site give them a check mate.  Um, I'll wait for the FactCheck writeup, thanks.

Also, conservative bloggers must have gotten a memo from McCain central because they've morphed their story from "he's a troop-hating America-hater" to "he couldn't bring cameras"... that at least is more believable, and fits in better with the "Obama is elitist" theme.

Personally, when I look at a situation like this, I try to deduce the truth by asking myself which side benefits politically.  (Because, clearly, everything about a campaign is geared around that.)  You've got to think that Obama's image-conscious campaign staff is smart enough to know that cancelling a visit to see wounded troops -- when a signifcant portion of the country (ie. more than zero) already believes your guy is a Muslim trying to infiltrate the White House -- on an overseas trip where millions of reporters are covering every single microscopic detail of what you're doing -- is going to hurt bigtime.  So the idea that Obama would cancel a visit simply because he couldn't bring cameras, while plausible in the sense that it fits with Obama's rock star image and McCain's general attack strategy, makes absolutely no sense from his campaign's viewpoint.

Not that any of that matters... what matters is who gets their attack meme into the 2-second sound bites of drive time radio news that Joe America makes their voting decision from.  *rolls eyes*

UPDATE 7/28:  Sure enough, the Obama troop-hating incident was prominently featured on a WRVA news snippet this morning, so I guess Republicans won this round of mind control.  Mike Huckabee of all people got the last word, saying something to the effect that Obama's explanation was "nonsense."  I'm sure Huckabee went on to explain in great nuanced detail why that was so, but alas the radio did not play any more of the recording.  P.S. FactCheck chimed in on this today, and I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Republicans will not be linking to it.

UPDATE 7/31:  McCain's proxy George Allen was on Richmond's Morning News with Jimmy Barrett this morning (audio here), and guess what he thought was the most memorable part of Obama's overseas trip?  Yes, shockingly enough, it was Obama snubbing those wounded troops "because it wasn't going to be a good photo-op."  He has a down home folksy manner so I'm sure he's more reliable than FactCheck.