Tag Archives: James Carter

June 4, 2013 · 3:55 PM

Rumsfeld ‘Can’t Tell’ If Obama Has Switched Sides In War On Terror (VIDEO)

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is once again not clear on which side of an issue he stands.  Seems like we’ve been here before…

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.   07-Jun-2002

Talking Points Memo

Speaking at a conservative gathering late last month, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he didn’t know if President Barack Obama had switched sides in the War on Terror.

The video below — mined by Democratic opposition researcher James Carter IV — shows Rumsfeld answering a question from a man off-screen at an event hosted by the David Horowtiz Freedom Center on May 21 in the Los Angeles area.

“As you go around the country, do you have any sense or the same sort of sinking feeling that the rest of us have that [Obama has] actually switched sides in the War on Terror?” the man asked, drawing a smattering of applause from the audience.

“You know, I just don’t feel competent to answer,” Rumsfeld said. “I can’t tell.”

Rumsfeld added, “It bothers me greatly that he’s unwilling to identify the enemy. I don’t see how you win if you don’t.”

Carter, best-known for spotting the infamous “47 percent” video involving Mitt Romney, told TPM that the full video of Rumsfeld’s appearance went up on the Freedom Center’s websiteon Monday. How did he find the video?

“This is just what I do,” Carter said.

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February 14, 2013 · 8:07 PM

Obama meets 47% video guy

AP Photo

The POTUS was in my neck of the woods today, that is…if you count 15 miles northeast of Decatur, GA as part of my neck of the woods.

When I first moved to Georgia, I remember folks always used the term “up the road”.  I assumed, coming from New York City, that the term meant about 4 or 5 blocks.  That was not a correct assumption.  ”Up the road” could mean as far as 1 to 5 miles.

So using the term “my neck of the woods” is not a far stretch, down here.

Politico

DECATUR, Ga. – President Obama on Thursday met the man who made “47 percent” part of Mitt Romney’s legacy.

Obama and opposition researcher James Carter, who released the infamous Romney fundraiser video, met backstage before Obama’s education event here, Carter’s cousin, Georgia state Sen. Jason Carter, told POLITICO.

Upon being introduced and told of James Carter’s role in the 47 percent video, Obama jumped forward to embrace him.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Obama told James Carter, his cousin said.

Both Carters are grandsons of former President Jimmy Carter.

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November 14, 2012 · 9:38 AM

Audio of Lee Atwater’s infamous 1981 interview on the Southern Strategy unearthed

This might be old news to some of you, but many have no idea just how insidious the GOP has been (for many years) about race and politics.  The following audio was found by the same guy that gave us the Romney 47% tape, James Carter IV.

Democratic Underground

Poppy Bush’s top operative and Karl Rove’s mentor spells out the Republican plan to win the votes of southern racists for a generation.

Keep this one in mind any time Hannity, Coulter or any GOP hack tries to claim the GOP was really the party of civil rights.

More background on this at The Nation:

The back-story goes like this. In 1981, Atwater, after a decade as South Carolina’s most effective Republican operative, was working in Ronald Reagan’s White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University. Lamis published the interview without using Atwater’s name in his 1984 book The Two-Party South. Fifteen years later—and eight years after Atwater passed away from cancer—Lamis republished the interview in another book using Atwater’s name. For seven years no one paid much attention. Then the New York Times’ Bob Herbert, a bit of an Atwater obsessive, quoted it in an October 6, 2005 column—then five more times over the next four years.

Those words soon became legend—quoted in both screeds (The GOP-Haters Handbook, 2007) and scholarship(Corey Robin’s 2011 classic work of political theory, The Reactionary Mind). Google Books records its use in ten books published so far this year alone. Curious about the remarks’ context, Carter, who learned Lamis had died in 2012, asked his widow if she would consider releasing the audio of the interview, especially in light of the use of race-baiting dog-whistles (lies about Obama ending work requirements for welfare; “jokes” about his supposed Kenyan provenance) in the Romney presidential campaign. Renée Lamis, an Obama donor, agreed that very same night. For one thing she was “upset,” Carter told me, that “for some time, conservatives believed husband made up the Atwater interview.” For another, she was eager to illustrate that her husband’s use of the Atwater quote was scholarly, not political.

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