Regarding the recent statements by Howard Gutman, making the kinds of attacks that Barack Obama has personally disavowed, Obama broke his word. Typically, there has been no consequences. In fact, as Jim Geraghy notes, this has been a pattern:
No sign that Gutman has departed the Obama campaign. In fact, we’re getting a rerun of something we saw earlier this year. Whenever we saw an Obama surrogate — say, Wes Clark, George McGovern, Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin, Democratic congressional candidate Bill Gillespie, Ed Schultz or Tony McPeak — attacking John McCain’s war record, the response was always the same – a short, curt, pro forma "we disapprove" statement from a spokesman, with no real consequences for the surrogate who stepped out of line.
We really have to start pressuring this guy to keep his word on this stuff. There is something profoundly fraudulent about his claims of a new kind of politics, pre-emptively denouncing this stuff, and then doing nothing when it acually happens.
In the case of Gutman, the appropriate response is clear. Minimally, he should remove Gutman from the Finance Committee and from any formal role in the campaign. If he were serious about any of this, he would give back some or all of Gutman’s money.
But Obama isn’t serious about his commitments. So it won’t happen.