In today's main editorial, entitled "Gotcha Politics, Meanwhile the war continues and the economy tanks," the Pittsburgh Post Gazette endorses for a SECOND TIME in one week Barack Obama. This comes a day after our County Executive, Dan Onorato, and his boy wonder sidekick, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl,both in the back pocket of the master of PA old boys' school politics, Gov. Eddie Rendell, took the day off to travel around with Bill Clinton and BOWL for Hillary Clinton in a KDKA Radio primary contest/radiocast.
At the KDKA BOWL-A-THON, Mr. Onorato asked his Hillary supporters, "Wasn't that a great debate Wednesday night?" In fact, he had to ask twice, but only to get a most tepid response. Apparently, even these supporters realized just Hillary was "in her element." But kudos to the Post Gazette, however, for standing up to its MSM cohorts.
It has come to this: Republicans and Sen. Hillary Clinton have been reduced to "gotcha" politics, attacking Sen. Barack Obama for a few ill-chosen words at a San Francisco fund-raiser. This cynical attempt to distract attention from real issues -- the growing number of jobless, mortgage foreclosures, record gasoline prices and the war in Iraq -- should be rejected by Pennsylvania voters and the rest of the nation. Even the broadcasters on Wednesday night's TV debate got down in the gutter by delaying questions on worthy issues until they could batter both Democratic candidates for 45 minutes with topics that either barely mattered or had been thoroughly aired.
Admittedly, Mr. Obama mangled his message last week, allowing Mrs. Clinton to bludgeon him with his own words, Republicans to wrap themselves in the flag and both -- incredibly -- to suggest that this former community organizer who had helped the poor of Chicago is somehow an "elitist." That description more nearly attaches to his Democratic opponent, a Wellesley and Yale law school graduate who, with her former president husband made more than $100 million since 2001, as well as to the presumptive Republican nominee (the son of an admiral, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and husband of a wealthy beer-distributorship heiress).
Sen. John McCain's pandering to small-town America is to be expected. The GOP has been successful at convincing the American heartland it shares their values while lying to them about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, reducing taxes on the top 1 percent of Americans and passing anti-consumer laws favorable to the interests of corporate America. Republicans would love to campaign this fall on hot-button issues such as guns and religion rather than the GOP White House's losing battle with the economy or its failure to extract the country from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pennsylvanians should not be fooled. In a long campaign, all candidates say things they wish they could take back. In addition to Mr. Obama's San Francisco remarks and Mrs. Clinton's imperfect Bosnia memory, we should not forget that Mr. McCain has admitted not knowing very much about the economy and has confused Shiites and Sunnis while discussing the Middle East. As in other states, Pennsylvania's Democratic primary boils down to whether voters believe Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton is better equipped to lead America out of Iraq and back from the precipice of recession, not who made the fewest gaffes. This week, after interviewing both senators, the Post-Gazette editorial board declared that candidate to be Barack Obama, and we see nothing in this teapot tempest to alter that judgment.