The fear factor

Michelle Malkin fits the Obama campaign’s AttackWatch into the larger pattern set by previous incarnations of “the Obama snitch police.” In her post Michelle recalls the 2008 Obama campaign’s FightTheSmears. In the good old days it was a smear to claim that Michelle Obama ordered room service when she hadn’t stayed at the hotel!

Fortunately, FightTheSmears didn’t have to respond to Andrea Tantaros’s New York Daily News column on Michelle Obama’s family vacation to Spain last summer. By that time, however, the Obamas had Minister of Propaganda Robert Gibbs to do the talking for them. (“She is a private citizen and is the mother of a daughter on a private trip,” Gibbs said. “And I think I’d leave it at that.”)

I find my own posts on the earlier incarnations of the snitch police by searching on “Krupskaya” (i.e., Mrs. Lenin), which turns up comments on the work in this vein by Linda Douglass, Anita Dunn, and Nancy Pelosi. I was beginning to think that in Obama’s world this is woman’s work, but ABC cites Obama for America national field director Jeremy Bird promoting the site. AttackWatch’s slogan sounds familiar: “Get the facts. Fight the smears.”

Don’t the Obama folks have any inhibitions about using the totalitarian apparatus of the snitch police? It is incredibly unsavory. Then again, maybe they are unfamiliar with the relevant history.

Or maybe that’s the whole idea. Maybe the idea is to intimidate the opposition. As the administration has expanded the regulatory power of the government over the banking and automobile industries, for example, it has rewarded friends, punished enemies, and silenced opposition. Michael Barone has conferred the name of “Gangster Government” on the operation.

No sooner had then GM chairman and chief executive officer Ed Whitacre said that he was aching to shed the derisive “Government Motors” moniker attached to the company than it was announced that Whitacre was leaving the company. Has he been heard from since?

So you have to wonder about the audacity of Ford in producing the Drive One ad featuring F-150 pickup truck buyer Chris. Hasn’t Ford got the memo? Steve Hayward comments on my post on the Drive One ad: “The really interesting thing to me is that Ford and/or its ad agency apparently have no fear of offending Obama or Washington, and no concern that it will alienate enough potential customers with this ad. Normally a consumer products company would never come within a country mile of this kind of ad. That alone makes this a significant indicator of where public opinion is trending.”

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