When Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) finally secured the Democratic nomination Tuesday night, his Republican opponents were fully prepared to welcome the Illinois senator to the general election.
Given Obama’s six-month, 54-contest, grueling up-and-down nomination battle against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the desire for a breather would be understandable.
{mosads}But the Republican National Committee (RNC) had already been piling up reams of opposition research, some of which it had already released, that it will use to define Obama before he has a chance to recover from the primaries.
When Obama woke up as the presumptive nominee Wednesday, his opponents on both the national and state level lowered the boom.
In Alabama, the state GOP chairman, Mike Hubbard, was ready for Obama with a statement questioning why Obama has not been to Iraq in so long.
In Florida, state party Chairman Jim Greer asked about Obama’s “willingness to meet with the Castro regime.”
The RNC was stocked with video footage of Obama’s Democratic rivals — especially Clinton — questioning his readiness to be commander in chief.
On Tuesday, with that night’s outcome clear, the RNC sprang into action, sending Republic surrogates out on more than 100 interviews in “national media, target markets, Hispanic press and blogs,” according to one official.
“Once he wheezed across the finish line, we were ready to help educate voters about Obama’s plans to raise taxes, cut troop funding, and negotiate with hostile leaders,” Amber Wilkerson, an RNC spokeswoman, said. “Thankfully, we only had to look to comments from Democrat leaders — including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — to pose some important questions about Obama’s poor judgment and weak experience.”
With Obama scheduled to speak in St. Paul, Minn., Tuesday night, the RNC set up a conference call with Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has been mentioned repeatedly as being a possible running mate to presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). The call was aimed at defining Obama in the national and local press on the same night he reached enough delegates to declare victory.
On Wednesday, Obama’s first day as the nominee, the RNC set up a conference call with national press and Jerry Kilgore, Virginia’s former attorney general, in anticipation of Obama’s Thursday rally in the Old Dominion.
In general-election politics, the party whose nominee crosses the primary finish line first enjoys a major advantage — an opportunity to define the would-be opponent before that candidate has time to transition to a general-election campaign.
In 2004, the RNC, fortunate to have a waiting nominee in President Bush, wasted no time in characterizing Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as a flip-flopper on the Iraq war. Kerry, who survived a crowded primary, was trying to catch his breath and devise a general-election strategy in late spring when the RNC went to work.
{mosimage}An RNC official said the Republicans have been preparing for months to do the same to either Obama or Clinton. They determined that Obama was inexperienced and unprepared to be commander in chief.
Thursday, the RNC will roll out a new effort to that end, a website called MeetBarackObama.com .
The Hill got an early look at the website, which promises to be a one-stop site for everything the RNC sees as an Obama vulnerability.
The site features a section on “The Rezko Judgment,” a running counter of how long it has been since Obama last traveled to Iraq and a mock-up of Obama’s résumé.
“Learn the Real Story About Illinois’ Freshman Senator,” the site boasts at the top.
At press time, attempts to reach the Obama campaign were unsuccessful.
Thursday, the RNC was looking to continue to capitalize on a stroke of luck it enjoyed hours after Obama had seized the mantle of presumptive Democratic nominee.
Late Wednesday afternoon, with the Obama campaign still no doubt enjoying a high after winning a brutal nomination battle, former Obama friend and fundraiser Tony Rezko was found guilty on 16 of 24 counts of corruption and influence-peddling.
The RNC, which seemed to be following the Rezko trial as closely as Rezko’s family, was ready to pounce with a series of e-mails to reporters calling attention to the two men’s relationship and questioning Obama’s judgment.
“On the day Barack Obama hoped to unite his party after wheezing over the finish line and claiming the Democrat nomination, a jury in his hometown of Chicago convicted his longtime friend and fundraiser Tony Rezko of multiple felonies,” Mike Duncan, the RNC chairman, said in a statement. “This is further proof that Obama’s high-flying rhetoric is just that and in no way represents the kind of change our nation demands. Today’s verdict and Obama’s friendship with Rezko raise serious questions about whether he has the judgment to serve as president.”
Combining two efforts, the RNC called attention to Clinton’s attacks on the Obama-Rezko connection.
The flip side of the RNC’s efforts are those of the Democratic National Committee, which now can unite fully behind a nominee as it seeks to portray McCain as committed to a long war in Iraq and, overall, a third Bush term.