Breaking: Obama Himself Exploits “Tonya Harding” Remark
By SusanUnPC on March 27, 2008 at 12:56 PM in Barack Obama, Chicago politics, Hillary Clinton
UPDATE: I have rewritten this story extensively to 1) ensure that Jake Tapper’s report is accurately described, and 2) to point out that Barack Obama made the Tonya Harding remarks at a rally in December 2007, three months before the DNC official anonymously spoke to Mr. Tapper, which leaves me to me wonder how the DNC official got that “colorful” description in his mind in the first place.
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Original story, edited: Remember how Jake Tapper’s March 26 story pointed to a remark that Hillary will have to use “Tonya Harding” tactics to win the nomination, which was attributed to an anonymous “DNC official”? That is true. But now Obama himself is exploiting the remark, as Corrente Wire reveals via an ABC News story that is dated December 2007. (Did the DNC official pick up the Tonya Harding “meme” from hearing Obama?)
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Vinton, Iowa Thursday that he’s not going to pull a Tonya Harding on his rival candidates.
“Folks said there’s no way Obama [referring to himself in the third person] has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding,” Obama joked, referring to the female skating champion who conspired to harm a competitor during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“We decided that’s not the kind of campaign we wanted to run,” he said. …
There you have it.
It came from Barack Obama and his campaign, not from an anonymous DNC official, as Tapper originally reported. I failed to correct this sentence.
However, the point is that Obama has exploited the Tonya Harding “meme” since December 2007, as the above-cited ABC News story makes clear.
Tapper’s reporting is accurate, he contends, and I trust him. However, where did the DNC official get the notion about Tonya Harding? Because Obama has been using that remark since December 2007 (or perhaps even earlier)?
Obama claims he doesn’t want to run that “kind of campaign,” then he sets off incendiary verbal bombs like that? In a RALLY speech? Back in 2007?
And he EXPLOITS the remark by repeating it?
Whatever happened to hope? Whatever happened to “we are the ones”? Whatever happened to the rest of his B.S.?
It’s gone poof. But that what happens with “smoke and mirrors” campaigns.
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Thank you to Susan for sending me the link to CorrenteWire. A careful reading of the Corrente post makes it clear that the remark did NOT originate with the Obama campaign, but is being used now by the campaign and by Obama himself.






















