Barack Obama's surrogates have been trying to convince the American people that his judgment is so impeccable that his lack of experience is irrelevant. However, it's hard to make that case when the candidate in question is the single biggest gaffe machine to hit American politics since Howard Dean. You think Joe Biden cranks out a lot of dumb quips? Well, Biden is a rank amateur compared to Obama. As you read these brainless comments, keep in mind that the biggest challenge I had in creating this list was limiting it to only 10 snafus.
In fact, there were so many of them that some of Obama's most famous slip-ups, like "I don't want them punished with a baby" and "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" didn't even make the list.
Well, let's get to it, shall we?
First up, here's the quotation that became the genesis of the "Obama is an elitist snob" meme.
10) "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff."
When the internet is afire with false rumors that you're a Muslim, do you really want to bizarrely reference your "Muslim faith?"
9) "Let's not play games. I was suggesting - you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith."
I wonder if abortion is above Sarah Palin's pay grade? I think not.
8) “Rick Warren: ...Now, let's deal with abortion; 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. As a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time, all of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?"Barack Obama: "Well, you know, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade."
This part of Obama's speech sounds like it was written for him by one of King Canute's courtiers.
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7) "...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals."
Whether this "joke" was about Sarah Palin or not, it was a rather foolish line given that even his own supporters in the audience took it as a sexist jab at her expense.
6) "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called 'change,' it's still going to stink. After eight years, we've had enough of the same old thing. It's time to bring about real change to Washington and that's the choice you've got in this election."
As he tried to explain why he tossed his grandmother under the bus in a previous speech, Obama actually managed to make it worse by showing that he thinks of white people as a generic group, not as individuals.
5) "The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person..."
Dan Quayle, who was unfairly pilloried as a moron, never said anything half as dumb as this.
4) "Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."
In his counterproductive race speech, which was mistakenly praised as genius by his supporters in the media, Obama managed to cement his association to the racist, anti-American rantings of Jeremiah Wright while simultaneously coming across as remarkably callous towards his own grandmother.
3) "I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
It's no secret to people who pay attention that Barack Obama is not a patriotic man and he managed to unwittingly hammer that point home when he rather foolishly made a big deal about refusing to wear a flag pin anymore.
2) "You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest..."
If you're from a small town and you're wondering what Barack Obama thinks of you, this quote tells you everything you need to know and then some.
1) "You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
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