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Obama tones it down as Hurricane Ike pounds Texas
2008-09-13
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (AFP) - The White House campaign faced its second storm-forced disruption Saturday as Barack Obama offered to raise funds from his army of donors for victims of the monstrous Hurricane Ike. With Ike coming ashore on Galveston Island in Texas and threatening Houston, a major oil processing center, the Democrat appeared likely to tone down a fearsome offensive against what he calls Republican John McCain's "lies." Obama canceled a planned appearance on the cult comedy program "Saturday Night Live" as he anxiously followed the enormous storm's destructive path through the Gulf of Mexico, aides said. In a telephone call to Houston Mayor Bill White, "Obama offered to do whatever he can to help, including using the Obama website to raise funds for relief efforts," campaign spokeswoman Linda Douglass said late Friday. Obama had already appealed to his base of more than two million donors to contribute funds to help victims of Hurricane Gustav, which forced McCain to curtail the first day of the Republican convention on September 1. The Democrat had been scheduled to hold a joint rally in Manchester, New Hampshire with his vice presidential running mate, Joseph Biden, on Saturday. But aides said Biden was no longer coming, and it was probable that Obama would scale back his savage attacks on McCain of recent days to avoid a show of overt partisanship in Ike's potentially tragic trail. There was no immediate word from the McCain campaign of any change of plan for the Republican ticket. McCain himself had no events scheduled on Saturday but his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was due to hold a morning rally in Anchorage and an afternoon event in Carson City, Nevada. Before focussing on Ike, Obama Friday ripped into the 72-year-old McCain as an out-of-touch economic illiterate who had slept through the Internet revolution. The Democrat, 47, vowed to wield the "truth" against his Republican adversary and seize the policy high ground, but McCain denied resorting to outright untruths in his escalating attacks on Obama. Questioned by a man frustrated with Obama's response to a Republican "smear campaign," the Illinois senator said in Dover, New Hampshire that Democrats were right to be nervous because "they've seen this movie before." But US voters would not be diverted from anxieties over the economy, healthcare, education and war, Obama said. "I can guarantee that we are going to be hitting back hard ... but we're hitting back on the issues that matter to families. I'm not going to start making up lies about John McCain," he said. Later in Concord, the Democrat said the choice facing Americans in the November 4 election was stark as he mocked McCain's "maverick" credentials by noting his lock-step voting record with President George W. Bush. "They will spend any amount of money and use any tactic out there in order to avoid talking about how we are going to move America into the future," he said of his Republican opponents. The sharper rhetoric came after McCain eliminated Obama's lead in the polls following his shock pick two weeks ago of Palin as his running mate. McCain defended an advertising onslaught that has accused Obama, controversially, of sexism against Palin, of planning to cripple the US economy with tax hikes and of wanting to teach sex education to kindergarten children. "Actually, they are not lies," McCain, who had no campaign events Friday, said on ABC day-time program "The View." "The point is I'm the same person with the same principles, whether spending, climate change, the conduct of the war in Iraq, torture of prisoners," the Arizona senator added. "No matter what it is -- I'm the same guy." Palin appeared to stumble over key foreign policy questions in her first major network interview with ABC News Thursday. In the interview's second part broadcast Friday, she picked at the scars of the Democratic primary fight. Obama must now be "regretting" that he did not name Hillary Clinton as his running mate, she said, lauding the former first lady's "determination and grit and even grace." "Sarah Palin should spare us the phony sentiment and respect," Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said after video footage emerged of Palin, in March, attacking Clinton's "perceived whine" during the primary race.
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