Conservatives Release 2007 Video Of Barack Obama Speaking On Race

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SMH at these GOP folks trying to bring out some old azz video of Barack Obama (above) in a desperate attempt to go racial..

Via Politico:

A videotape surfaced Tuesday of a 2007 speech by then-Sen. Barack Obama in which Obama said that when it came to the federal goverrnment’s response to Hurricane Katrina, “the people down in New Orleans, they don’t care about as much.” In the tape – which was released by conservative news outlet the Daily Caller and Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News on the eve of the first presidential debate – Obama says the government gave aid to the victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew, but less to the predominantly minority victims of Katrina.

The first clip Hannity played — crediting Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson for getting his hands on the full tape — shows Obama greeting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the crowd at the speech, which the then-senator delivered to thousands of African-American religious leaders. Wright’s racially charged sermons became a major flashpoint during the 2008 campaign. Wright, Obama said, is “my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.”

Some conservatives have long believed that Obama got through the 2008 election without a serious look at his feelings about racial issues, particularly after his GOP rival John McCain took Wright off the table in his own campaign. The tape’s release by a conservative news outlet and a top conservative commentator seemed an attempt to thrust race — and Obama’s views of racial issues — into the 2012 election at a particularly important moment, on the eve of the first presidential debate.

Hannity introduced the tape as a “bombshell” that includes “some of the most divisive class warfare and racially charged rhetoric ever used by Barack Obama.” Though a local newspaper posted videos of some of the remarks online and reporters from major news organizations covered it, Hannity said all of that attention “omit the most inflammatory comments” from Obama. But a portion of the speech —including Obama’s introduction of Wright — has been on YouTube since 2007. Also already public was Obama’s discussion of “quiet riots that take place every day [that] are born from the same place as the fires of destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and death.” President George W. Bush, he said, had done nothing to ease the tensions. Discussing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama said that “the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane. All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see.”

Other parts are newly unearthed. Poor people “need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office,” Obama said in what Drudge teased for hours as a particularly explosive line.

Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt quickly pounced on the video’s release as “a transparent attempt to change the subject from [Romney’s] comments attacking half of the American people,” he said, referring to the Republican candidate’s comments about the “47 percent.” Speaking after the video aired on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he didn’t think the video would have a major impact, but reflected a tendency toward dishonesty he charged was also there in the White House’s response to the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans in Libya. “I don’t think this particular speech is definitive, but it’s a reminder,” Gingrich said. “Notice on Benghazi, for example, you have the same pattern of dishonesty in the Obama White House that you have in that speech you just showed from 2007.”

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the few African-American members of Congress, said on Fox News that “there is a tinge of racially motivated comments that he is making there.” But, like Gingrich, he wasn’t all that impressed. “What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere,” he said. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile attacked the outlets that returned to the old video. “Sad to see Fox News and Drudge try to take us back …. Again. #pathetic,” she wrote on Twitter.

See, even that shady Nasty Newt and GOP Houseboy Allen West don’t think bringing up old isht is going to make any difference.

Discuss…

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81946_Page3.html#ixzz28EmMyYvz