Obama camp blasts 'dangerous' McCain proposals
Barack Obama's presidential campaign is forcefully denouncing Republican nominee John McCain's speech to a pro-Israel group Monday, calling his proposals little more than a continuation of President Bush's foreign policy and claiming the Arizona senator is distorting Obama's position on Iran.
"Why should anyone expect that (McCain) will have better results than this president has?" asked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), during a campaign-sponsored conference call Monday.
McCain spoke earlier in the day at a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, where he panned Obama for saying he would meet with leaders of Iran and other US enemies.
"It's hard to see what such a summit with President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another," McCain told the AIPAC crowd.
Obama's campaign released a quick statement slamming McCain for offering little beyond Bush-redux.
“John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said in the e-mailed statement.
“Instead of recognizing reality, John McCain continues to run on a platform of doubling down on George Bush's failed policies, while carrying on his divisive brand of politics. The United States and Israel cannot afford four more years of an unwillingness to change course.”
Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough reminded reporters on the afternoon conference call that even as McCain and President Bush demagogue Obama's call for more diplomacy with Iran, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates also is advocating engagement.
The presumptive GOP nominee also said -- erroneously -- that Obama was against declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
While Obama did miss the vote on one resolution offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Kyl (R-AZ), he co-sponsored another measure that would've declared the Iranian Guard a terror organization. Obama's resolution, unlike the one McCain cited, did not lay out conditions that could expand the mission of US troops in Iraq to include fighting in Iran, McDonough said.
"We think that was mission creep," he said. "We think that was a mistake, and that's why Barrack strongly opposed it."
Obama, who has struggled to attract Jewish voters, will be speaking to AIPAC on Wednesday, and the speech will allow him to amplify his support for Israel and stress his proposals to change course from the Bush administration, Schiff said.
The Illinois senator has been holding more events to meet Jewish voters face-to-face, including a recent town hall meeting at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Florida. Scurrilous e-mails spreading untrue rumors that Obama is a Muslim have proved to be a stumbling block among these voters, Schiff said, and the outreach is an attempt to correct those mis-impressions.
"A lot of what people have heard about him, particularly in the jewish community," he said, "have come from these e-mails."
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