Now we are beginning to see the Obama campaign response to Gov. Palin's speech Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention. That reponse? That Palin was, more or less, lying:
"This is what politicians do when they don’t have a record to run on," Obama’s chief strategist says aboard the campaign plane Thursday.
Of Palin’s address: "There wasn’t one thing that she said about Obama or what he’s proposing that’s true."
Yes, the title of the diary is a paraphrase of what Axelrod said, but the gist of it is true.
The Page link
There's also more from Time's Swampland Blog:
Time Swampland
The purpose of this diary is to point out the approach the Obama campaign is taking to the comments from this convention. Namely, they are going farther than I have seen Democrats go in previous campaigns: accusations that the Republicans and other critics are lying. I used to see criticism that skated around what I'm sure the campaign officials wanted to say, never coming right out and saying that they thought: that the Republicans were lying, not telling the truth. That old form of messaging was not effective, always sounded a little wimpy. Not anymore. Not with the Obama campaign.
I saw from the other night when Robert Gibbs accused Joe Lieberman of lying. Not even a Republican, but an "Independent Democrat", and you might have thought Lieberman's "theme" ("rising above partisanship") would have forced a soft response from the Obama campaign, fearing that a harsh retort would play right into Lieberman's thesis. But that didn't happen. The official line on Lieberman was that what was said was a series of lies about Obama.
Now the same with Axelrod's comments on Palin. He could have continued the lines about Palin giving a good speech, about the lack of policy specifics. But a lie is a lie - I saw and heard those lies over and over again last night - and it's good to see Axelrod calling them out in public.
This also shows the Obama campaign will not necessarily hold punches on Palin. It may still be smarter to keep the focus on John McCain, but if Sarah Palin is going to go to war on Obama and Biden, she opens herself to having that war brought back right at her.
Call them liars when they lie. It is what it is. I like this approach.