Is Ayers Relevant?

Michael Barone - no wild-eyed right-wing partisan he - says yes:

Of Barone's three points, I think the third one is the most revealing as to Barack Hoover Obama's thoughts on the matter.  If he didn't think his good, close, personal friend Billyboy was a huge potential liability to him, why has he so persistently lied about their personal and professional relationship?  And just to answer that rhetorical question, Barry knows that Americans will elect (and re-elect) pathological liars, but doesn't want to take a chance that a majority might consider an affiliation with a violent traitorous terrorist and its implications about his true hard-left views and/or personal judgment to be very relevant indeed to his fitness to occupy the Oval Office.

Victor Davis Hanson provides a fourth reason that is one humdinger of a reinforcement of the Barone trilogy:

"He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005"  (New York Times, 10/3)

Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 — when in 2001 Ayers gave widely publicized interviews claiming he had no regrets about the bombing, indeed regretted that he had not done enough, and did not necessarily have any remorse either about his Weathermen career?

Ponder that: the possible next President of the United States, well after 9/11 and in the climate of hourly worry over terrorism here at home, was still friendly and communicating with an associate that had to abandon his book tour due to popular outcry, and was widely quoted as absolutely unrepentant about his terrorism. That is a damning indictment of his judgment — among other things — and it is no "smear" to raise the issue. [emphases added]

"Popular outcry," hmm?  Oh, maybe it was just a tiny, right-wing extremist fascionazi minority trying to "smear" a now-"reformed," "respectable" college professor and "community organizer".  But ask yourself how many book tours, even "controversial" ones, are ever outright abandoned by the author and/or the publisher?  Not many, I'd wager.  And if this "popular outcry" was a minority sentiment, just how big a minority would it take to critically impact The One's modest national lead, particularly in "bitter, clingy" battleground states?  Think the outcriers sitting on the electoral fence might be alarmed that America's "Savior" maintained a close friendship with the object of that public outcry, about whose violent, radical past False Messiah still begs complete ignorance, right up until he stepped onto the national stage from which he planned to embark on his bid for ultimate power?  Think that after B.O. wins he won't "rediscover" that relationship, and all the other ones (Wright, Rezko, Pfleger, etc.) he's "temporarily" abandoned?

J-Ger has a tremendous suggestion for Team Sith, assuming they don't decide to concede Pennsylvania the way they did Michigan:

At some point in the coming days or weeks, McCain and/or Palin will be campaigning in Pennsylvania, probably somewhere in the Philadelphia suburbs. I wonder if it would be worth the one-hour trip to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to hold an event preferably within sight of the base. (Obviously, campaigning on the base is off-limits.) There, either McCain or Palin ought to read a bit from Bob Owens.

Money punchline:

"There's reason to doubt that oft-repeated pledge of 'supporting the troops' when you've worked for a man who tried to kill the troops."

I would suggest that the third debate is where Darth Queeg ought to call Barry's bluff, and this is the line he ought to use.

Will he?  Well, confrontation (with Democrats) is anything but Maverick's style.  I guess it depends on how badly he wants to win - of which I've also long had my doubts.

Badly enough, at least, to issue statements from Ayers' victims:

Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers:

“When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn’t do more.

“While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend’s violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama’s political career. Given Ayers’ celebrity status among the left, it’s difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.

“Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets — but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”

Correction: Barack Obama's friend and the next Secretary of Education of the United States.  Or "Chief Party Ideologist," for short.

The GOP's ace in the hole wedge issue, or is the fallout from the Democrats' financial logic bomb just too deafening for all of the above to punch through?  'Tis doubtful we'll find out if Sailor continues to just nibble around the edges instead of taking the mandatory big bites.