Captain Ed: [1]
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny [2] on the abrupt cancellation [3] of Barack Obama’s visit to Landstuhl and Ramstein yesterday. The campaign tried to excuse it by claiming that it wouldn’t be appropriate to visit while on a campaign-funded portion of his trip, but that wasn’t the real problem. When Obama found out he couldn’t use the visit as a photo op, he canceled:
One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”
The official said “We didn’t know why” the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. “He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.”
This snubbing doesn’t shock me at all, but it does reinforce the assesment I made of the man a year ago or so.
As Ed suggests, what we have here is Obama kicking the injured vets to the side of the road when he and his people see that they won’t be able to use them as props for his election effort. There’s no other way this can be taken.
If he thinks for one second that the American people aren’t going to remember this come November, he’s sadly mistaken.
Others:
Weekly Standard Blog [4], The Campaign Spot [5], Redstate [6] Patterico’s Pontifications [7]