Notable Quotables - 05/19/2008

"[For Obama] the real test is yet to come. The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities....It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as 'the other' - as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters....The real question is whether he [McCain] can - or really wants to - rein in the merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet and fund the 'independent expenditure' groups who exercise their freedom in ways that give a bad name to free speech."
- Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas, May 19 Newsweek.

"[In 1988] the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. The memory of that campaign - reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry's war record in the 2004 election - haunts Democrats of a certain generation....Like Mr. Dukakis in 1988, Mr. Obama is relatively new to the national scene, and thus vulnerable to being defined by Republican attacks. And like Mr. Dukakis, Mr. Obama lacks experience with the politics of wedge issues on a national stage."
- New York Times correspondent Robin Toner in a front-page "Political Memo," May 4

"Let's talk about this Jeremiah Wright controversy....You remember the swift boating of John Kerry....Do you see a fall election campaign where there are images of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright side by side? Is it going to hurt him?"
- NBC's Matt Lauer to former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Today, May 9.

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