WILKES-BARRE - Here in what can be considered as Hillary Clinton’s home territory (her father lived and is buried here), we’re getting a heavier-than-usual dose of tying John McCain to George Bush by Democrat Barack Obama. Obama’s beating the drums for anti-wealthy tax cuts and bringing troops back from Iraq and how McCain stood on the “sidelines” during the home foreclosure crisis.
“He’s offering the same four years of George Bush policies that have gotten us in this pickle,” Obama just said. More in tomorrow’s Intell.
Sounds an awful lot like a general election speech.
12:19 p.m. Obama’s sounding more determined and more forceful than he has at any other time in this campaign. Maybe it’s because Clinton’s in town, maybe because journalists’ e-mails have been flooded with anti-Obama messages from the RNC, but whatever it is, he’s delivering a speech with a slight measure of more conviction than I’ve previously heard in Pennsylvania.
12:25 p.m. “Don’t cut taxes during war time,” Obama just said. He’s on a very Rendellian speech, denouncing funding cuts to the states for senior programs and No Child Left Behind, saying the 2003 tax cuts and the war in Iraq have “punched holes” in state budgets, something us government reporters hear a lot about in February when Gov. Ed Rendell unveils his annual budget proposals.
12:50 p.m. Here’s one folks in Lancaster County are going to eat up on both sides of the issues. Obama just said he would support gun control legislation. I’ll throw that one in the article tomorrow because I know Democratic leaders, particularly in Lancaster city, support Rendell’s gun control platform while many rank-and-file and elected Republicans from the county do not.
