Will the Romney Campaign Demand Release of the Obama-Khalidi Video?

Will this be the year we finally see a presidential nominee with the guts to make an issue of his opponent’s extremist associations?

Actually, it’s already happened, but not in the way many of us wished. President Obama recently accused Mitt Romney of allying himself with “the radical fringe of his party,” in an e-mail highlighting his occasional fundraising events with Donald Trump, and now the president’s campaign is warning that Paul Ryan is a dangerous extremist.

The audacity of this line of attack naturally brings up the issue of Those Whose Names Must Not Be Mentioned — Obama’s own collection of terror supporters and actual terrorists he chose as mentors (and whose influence is disturbingly evident in his foreign policy). If Romney was waiting for some kind of formal invitation before attacking the president’s most glaring weakness, that invitation has arrived.

Obama’s fundraising off Romney’s “radical” associations is an example of either chutzpah he will get away with or hubris that will come back to haunt him by inviting scrutiny of Obama’s closeness with terrorists who appear with him in the suppressed Los Angeles Times video of a 2003 anti-Israel gathering — former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi (who dedicated a book to Palestinian murderer Yasser Arafat), Bill Ayers (who dedicated a book to Palestinian murderer Sirhan Sirhan), and Bernardine Dohrn.

The guest list also included Ali Abunimah, a close Obama ally who founded the Electronic Intifada website in 2001 (surely Obama realized that the word “intifada” is synonymous with suicide bombings) and the Sanabel debka troupe. Columnist Debbie Schlussel reported that she witnessed a performance of this Palestinian children’s dance group that included “simulating beheadings and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags.” (Did they let the children use real swords when they acted out the beheadings? Maybe we’ll find out when this comes up in the debates.)