In "Endgame [1]," the Times' brief daily compilation of the campaign's day-to-day state of play, Katharine Seelyestill managedto wedge this sliver under the McCain campaign's thumbnail, referring toa McCain stop in Hershey, Pa.:
You know a campaign is reaching when it starts calling the opponent a "redistributionist," as Mr. McCain said of "Barack the wealth-spreader."
McCain of coursewas referring to a newly unearthed Obama radio interview from 2001, in which the then-Illinois state senator sounded quite the law professor liberal (which he was as well), lamenting the "Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society." But Seelye didn't bother to note that.
And is it really a "reach" to call the very liberal Obama a "redistributionist"? Obama wants to raise taxes on what he considers "the wealthy" (those making $250,000 a year) and has called for $4.3 trillion [2]in new spending [2], according to Alan Reynolds of the libertarian Cato Institute. If that's not redistributionist, what is?