Inherit The Windbag: Swiftboating Blago?
By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jul 12, 2010 3:40PM
With federal prosecutors wrapping up their case against our ex-governor this week, Blago is getting attacked on another front, this time by a well-known political operative. Rick Reed, the man responsible for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack ads against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the 2004 election, is helping to fund a new website that tries to connect Blago to current president Barack Obama. The site, Obama & Blago, is actually the brainchild of former Jim Ryan staffers Dan Curry and John Pearman (though Curry told Chicago News Cooperative that Ryan himself is in no way involved with the site. The site's funding comes from Reed's the Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America, a 501(c)3 organization.
Says Curry: “We’re not saying everybody is in the same boat here, but we’re saying in general that [Obama] is being portrayed as not closely connected to these folks.”Curry notes the relationship between Obama and convicted fundraiser Tony Rezko, as well as the fact that Obama endorsed Blagojevich for governor in 2006.
“Part of our frustration is that had people spoken out against Rod Blagojevich earlier than they did, we wouldn’t have had a second term for him,” Curry said.
Blago's defense has maintained that President Obama should testify in the trial because his testimony would aid Blago's case. The new site, of course, takes umbrage with the original 2008 report from the then-incoming Obama Administration which cleared Obama of any wrong-doing. The site also spends a fair amount of its posts focusing on criticism (and the occasional praise) of the mainstream media's coverage of the trial. Whether or not this method proves to have any effect whatsoever, well, we'll just have to wait and see. But Obama has come out of the Blago imbroglio unscathed so far and it just doesn't seem likely that even in the GOP will be able to use something as surreal as the Blago case to tarnish his presidency.