Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama
WASHINGTON - Democrats complain they were blindsided when President Obama weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque and handed the GOP a new club to beat them with.
Capitol Hill Democrats, including those facing tough races, were not told in advance before Obama's Friday night speech defending Muslims' rights to build a mosque in lower Manhattan.
While Mayor Bloomberg knew ahead of time what Obama intended to say at the Ramadan dinner at the White House, New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand were kept in the dark, sources said.
So was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who dramatically broke with Obama on the mosque Monday.
Several Democratic campaign operatives complained that without a heads-up, they did not have the time to war-game how to handle questions from the news media or GOP attacks.
"They did the right thing - they just didn't do it the right way," lamented another Democratic source.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has spent three days on the phone doing damage control with angry Democrats and urging them not to go public against the President, Democratic sources said.
Obama went ahead with the Ramadan dinner remarks even though his top political advisers had not reached a consensus on what he should do. Emanuel was one of the skeptics.
Source: NY Daily News
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Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from New Jersey. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Follow him on Facebook.
Source: NY Daily News
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from New Jersey. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Follow him on Facebook.