In recent days, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign has aggressively tried to paint Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as anti-Israel because of his relationship with Palestinian-American Professor Rashid Kahlidi. On Tuesday, Rudy Giuliani pointed out that the Woods Foundation funded “Khalidi’s organizations” while Obama was a board member. During a rally in Ohio yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) characterized Khalidi as a “radical professor” and Obama’s “political ally.”
In the past few months, Karl Rove has received considerable media attention for saying that the McCain campaign had “gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test.” But make no mistake: Rove hasn’t really changed. Yesterday on The O’Reilly Factor, Rove had no problem with the substance of the misleading Khalidi attacks, wishing only that they had come sooner:
ROVE: I worry a little bit that they get numb to it this late in the game. We do know is that at the close of the contest, the undecided voters tend to disregard things that they are hearing for the first time, unless it’s from a credible third party source. [...]
What bothers me about this is where was the McCain opposition research when this article came out last April that talked about Obama’s presence at the dinner for Khalidi and mentioned in the story the tape. This would be a lot better if this drumbeat had been started last spring, rather than started five or six days before the election.
Watch it:
The Khalidi attacks are just as misleading as all the others that Rove condemned earlier. As the Washington Post explained in 2004, Khalidi is a well-respected, mainstream scholar of Middle Eastern studies and doesn’t have “a radical take on the present state of affairs.” Additionally, while McCain served as chairman of its board, the International Republican Institute distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi.
Evidently, you can take Rove out of dirty politics, but you can’t take dirty politics out of Rove.
Transcript:
O’REILLY: Also, in addition to the economic stuff, Sarah Palin is now being used to throw out a whole bunch of stuff to make people more fearful of John McCain (sic). I want you to react to this Palin sound bite today. Roll the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: It seems that there was yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama, going back several years. This is important, because this associate, Rashid Khalidi, he, in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he’s a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’REILLY: OK. Now, it’s Rashid Khalidi. And he’s a radical professor that teaches at Columbia University. And Barack Obama went to dinner at his house. And The L.A. Times has a tape of what — the conversation at the dinner. And there were allegedly some anti-Israel statements, not by Barack Obama, but by some people there. But Khalidi is obviously a person not friendly to Israel.
Now that tape.
ROVE: Yes, bad guy.
O’REILLY: Yes. He’s being harbored and all that. But is it effective, in your opinion, for Sarah Palin to keep bringing these associations up? Or are people numb to it now?
ROVE: I worry a little bit that they get numb to it this late in the game. We do know is that at the close of the contest, the undecided voters tend to disregard things that they are hearing for the first time, unless it’s from a credible third party source.
What bothers me about this is – I mean, and it might have some resonance with people who are for McCain. What bothers me about this is where was the McCain opposition research when this article came out last April that talked about Obama’s presence at the dinner for Khalidi and mentioned in the story the tape. This would be a lot better if this drumbeat had been started last spring, rather than started five or six days before the election.
O’REILLY: If you were advising McCain then, you would say stay on the economy, you seem to be getting traction there. That’s where you got to be?
ROVE: Yes. And look, McCain ought to stay on the economy. I’m not necessarily certain that it’s a bad thing to have Palin talk about this for one event on one day. I’m not certain I would make the staple of her speeches through the balance of the election.
O’REILLY: No, I think you’re right. I think it’s — the choir gets revved up about this, but the choir isn’t going to make John McCain turn it around.
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