POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday forcefully addressed concerns that he had moved too quickly to the political center, acknowledging complaints from “my friends on the left” about his statements on Iraq, his approaches to evangelicals and his remarks on other issues that have alarmed some of his supporters.
“Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he told a crowd gathered at a town hall-style meeting in this Atlanta suburb. “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”
“I am someone who is no doubt progressive,” he said, adding that he believed in universal health care and that government had a strong role to play in overseeing financial institutions and cracking down on abuses in bankruptcies and the like.
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“I believe in personal responsibility; I also believe in faith,” he said. “That’s not something new; I’ve been talking about that for years. So the notion that this is me trying to look” — he waved his hands around his head — “centrist is not true.”
Regarding his position on Iraq, he said, “Don’t be confused: I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I am president of the United States of America.”
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/politics/09campaign.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=b690d55617d9d0db&ex=1215748800&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1215785058-T9CQHCNICPqGNIpAArg6lASee also:
July 8, 2008, 12:38 pm
Obama Addresses Critics on ‘Centrist’ Moves
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“One of the things you find as you go through this campaign, everyone becomes so cynical about politics,” Mr. Obama said. There is an “assumption that you must be doing everything for political reasons.”
Voters should understand, he said, that they rarely will find themselves in 100 percent agreement with him. “But don’t assume that’s because I’m just doing it for ‘political reasons,’ ” he said.
“That just means we disagree,” he said.
More:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/obama-addresses-critics-on-centrist-movesAlso:
‘I am someone who is no doubt progressive’
Posted July 8th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16129.htmlAnd for a lesson in perspective:
See prior thread:
Obama Says His Critics Haven’t Been Listening (‘I am someone who is no doubt progressive’)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3390982