McCain campaign's statement on Obama's support of wealth redistribution

From a McCain-Palin campaign press release:

The American people continue to learn more about Barack Obama. Now we know that the slogans 'change you can believe in' and 'change we need' are code words for Barack Obama's ultimate goal: 'redistributive change.' In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn't been more 'radical' and described as a 'tragedy' the Court's refusal to take up 'the issues of redistribution of wealth.' No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench – as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it. Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change." -- McCain-Palin Senior Policy Adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin

Here's a transcript of Obama's comments:

"You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical, it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf and that hasn’t shifted. And one of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that." – Barack Obama, September 6, 2001.

Here's the really frightening part of what Obama said:

And to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical, it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.

Well thank God the Warren Court didn't break free from those restraints. Obama has said he views the US Constitution as a "living consitution," meaning that it can be reinterpreted on the whim of activist judges who want to legistlate from the bench-activist judges such as the ones a President Barack Obama would appoint to serve.

Election day is eight days from now.

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