Republicans are all alike, they are all the same lying scum.  Did anyone seriously believe that Mary Matalin was anything else?  Merely more genteel in demeanor and appearance than Karl Rove, but otherwise indistinguishable.   I just LOVE that line, "not .  .  . a political book."

Bush Republicans are in the scholarship of smearing.  That is their only skill.

I'm curious for an answer from some of you insiders, who is the real phoney in that marriage, or is it simply made for political wattage?

What is really horrific is that this is a woman who is the HEAD of [literary] publishing subsidary.  Take heed in your pitches, all you novelists.

Talk about defining down the meaning of "scholarship"...

It's beautiful that Jerome Corsi, the author of the bestselling, fact-fudging Obama Nation book the

To be spanked by Michael Medved has to be the absolute lowest point of ones' existence ...

Spanked by Michael Medved?  I invoke Rule 34.

Matalin is a remarkably dishonest, awful person and always has been - the Queen Bee of the scum who just got done raping the country.  May her karma come to her in my lifetime so I can enjoy myself watching.

One more point: this is where the pedal hits the medal in what Obama is trying to do.

He nees to immediately stand up and gives a clear, no holds barred, primetime speech on this disgraceful smear - naming names - and what this garbage has done to our country. He also needs to ask us as a nation if this is the sort of mentality we'd like to hand off to our kids.  He must do this now.

Either he fights back on this foul stench coming from the pigs that are the Republican party, and does it in an utterly fearless manner, or he stands for nothing deserves to lose.

Mary has the golden touch in campaigns! She helped George Allen and Fred Thompson.

Wandrey, if he does so, the Republicans will dance around the fire and claim victory, for they will have succeeded in doing two things:  One, they will have reduced Obama to responding to their empty foolishness, which means that they will only redouble their efforts to pump out nothing but such empty foolishness.  Two, they will paint him as the 'Angry Black Man', regardless of how calm, cool, and collected he presents his material.  

Obama sits in a much tougher spot than any previous Democratic candidate, he has to skim along a very narrow knife-edge of response to any criticism.  He has to handle each phase with an incredibly delicate touch or a great many folks will believe every vile smear about him.

I disagree Kgrant - tell that to President Kerry.

Obama has to give up the fear of scaring whitey on this, its the perfect opportunity to do so because of the low nature of the attack and the hilarious idiocy of the people involved.

On balance, people do need to see eventually that the man has nads.

Wandrey, I would like to hope that you are correct.  I would really like to be dead wrong on this, but I fear that I will not be.   Obama is playing with a different set of rules than Kerry.  I think it far too easy to say to 'give up the fear of scaring whitey', when in reality the moment Obama shows too much fire or ire in his response to these foolish attacks and the media, not simply the Republicans, will grind him into the ground.  Happily.

We'll see Kgrant.  Obama is nothing if not disciplined, he's probably watching and deciding with much more calmness than any of us.  

I still say that if he stays himself on this - cerebral, professorial, apealing to the higher angels, etc he'd be in great shape.  He must respond to this with power.  Lots of people see his race less and less every day, not just twee urbanites either.  Its still there yes, but on the margins less and less.

The main reason for the Obama phenom, I think as much as his race, is his rare ability and desire (not always, but often enough) to speak about what's right in front of people's faces without the usual political kabuki.  People do hunger for that.  A black guy named Hussein is tied because of it.

If he comes out and calls bullshi* in an appealing way, he'll win this one hands down.

But call bull he must.

Remember when he called Hillary's gas tax pander a gimmick?  That little bit of what-for immediately killed her on that.  

Just that little tiny bit of call bull thrilled people.

We're hungry for it, no matter who we are.

PS this is where we need smokin' Joe Biden as our VP - he'd kill on this stuff.

Biden for VP.

Here's hoping that this book doesn't stick as it did with Kerry.  Personally I think Wandreycer1 is right; Obama, or some decent surrogate, needs to call out names and humiliate these bastards as lying liars.  Will it happen?  Naa.  For once, just once, I'd like to see a Dem show some teeth and rip a pube's entrails out in public.  Maybe even literally.  All I see is lies like McBush gave this morning on NPR and the Obama people just being passive all the time.  Being nice never works with the pubes.  They only understand brute force and being beaten into submission.

Amen tnmats.  I'm no Moveon.org type, but I am so tired of cowering Democrats I'm ready to blow - we have no reason to be anything other than savage on this. Pubes must be vanquished.

Yes, that is the solution - the VP choice needs to have the daily responsibility to do the knife work, so that Obama does not have to.  This sounds exactly like something that Biden could do with his trademark wit and skill.  Obama-Biden looks better every day.

KGrant - Obama doesn't have to say a thing about Corsi or the book.  That's what surrogates are for.  Dems should take a page from the opposition's playbook here, namely the discrediting of Dan Rather and 60 Minutes for their reporting of Bush's military record during the 2004 campaign.  Corsi is such a racist whack job and the book is so full of outright lies and distortions that if this is played the right way in the mainstream media, the focus will be on Corsi's credibility and not the content of the book itself.

This book differs from "Unfit for Command"  in one important respect.  Although Corsi's Kerry book was every bit as dishonest, it did play into a genuine sense of resentment of Kerry among some Vietnam-era veterans over his 1970s testimony before Congress, which many read as accusing American troops of murder and even genocide.  (Granted, Kerry said no such thing, but his testimony at the time was so nuanced that it could be easily misunderstood.)  Because of this, there was a readiness in some quarters of the electorate to accept the accusations, accurate or not, that Kerry misrepresented his war record.

There is no such subtext underlying Corsi's smears of Obama.  And that is a significant difference.

"There is no such subtext underlying Corsi's smears of Obama."

There is.  Nearly 20% of American still think he is a Muslim; there are some in TNRland who think "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" is an insult and could sink Obama's candidacy.  And almost 100% of Americans see that he is black or, as Channie said on another thread, "exotic."  Even our good Michael Crowley thinks that by going to Hawaii to visit Granny, Barack was in danger of looking foreign.

The subtext is there, but it is not Obama's place to get into a "Duck season""Wabbit season" argument with a published bigot and a well-known lunatic.  We should accept the fact that the 450,000 people who bought the book will never vote for Obama.  And we should thank the right-wing blogs for doing the take-down of this lunatic as we speak.

icarusr - I agree that anyone already inclined to believe that Obama is either a Muslim or the second coming of Bobby Seale wouln't vote for him in any event.  My point is that Corsi's current book - unlike the Kerry book in 2004 - is unlikely to create many new converts.

And while you're extending kudos to the conservative bloggers who (admirably) refuse to get taken in by this bilge, please don't overlook the heavy lifting being done over at Media Matters to refute Corsi's lies one by one.