Alexander involved in state GOP's decision to remove Obama’s middle name from Web site

By Lucas L. Johnson II
The Associated Press

NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Republican Party reversed course and removed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s middle name from a press release on its Web site.

The party said in a clarification at the bottom of the release Wednesday night that it removed Obama’s middle name Hussein “to diffuse attempts by Democrats and the Left to divert attention from the main point of this release.”

But Democrats weren’t the only ones upset with the state party’s earlier pledge to keep using the name in releases.

John McCain, who holds a large lead in his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, on Tuesday said it was inappropriate for a speaker at a campaign event in Ohio to repeatedly include Obama’s middle name when referring to the Illinois senator.

And Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that after a conversation with state party Chairwoman Robin Smith she had agreed to remove the release and a photo of Obama in traditional African garments.

“She and the senator agreed it could be easily misinterpreted, taken out of context and considered inappropriate,” Alexander’s spokesman Lee Pitts said.

The use of the middle name comes at a time when Obama is fighting false rumors that he’s a Muslim.

Smith had earlier in the day defended the use of Obama’s middle name, likening it to referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton or Richard Milhous Nixon.

“We have a duty to inform the Republican base,” she told the Knoxville News Sentinel for Wednesday’s editions.

State Democratic leaders called that insistence on using Obama’s middle name an attempt to sow racial discord across the state.

State Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis called the state Republican Party’s decision an attempt to appeal to the worst of people and their prejudices.

“It was embarrassing for John McCain, and now is becoming an embarrassment for every Tennessean,” Kyle said.

Rep. Ulysses Jones, a Memphis Democrat and vice chairman of the Tennessee Black Caucus, agreed.

“To me it shows a cloud of racial discord that they’re trying to disseminate to the public and to the citizens of Tennessee,” he said.

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Gray Sasser issued a statement Wednesday saying the behavior is a kind of fear mongering that “has no place in the public discourse.”

“Senator John McCain has forcefully come out and rejected these types of gutter politics,” Sasser said.

State Republican Party spokesman Bill Hobbs downplayed the comments, calling them “sidelines from people who would rather scream racism than deal with Obama’s real and worrisome record regarding Israel.”

The release was written by Hobbs, who resigned from a previous job at Belmont University in 2006 in response to a cartoon he drew depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad holding a bomb.

Hobbs resigned from the school’s marketing and communications department following media attention over the cartoon, which represented Muhammad as a stick figure.

Obama’s middle name was noticeably omitted from two press releases sent out by the state Republican Party on Wednesday.

Ramsey, a Blountville Republican and a McCain supporter, doesn’t consider the dispute a major issue, said spokesman Lance Frizzell.

Frizzell also declined to acknowledge that the state GOP stance is at odds with the McCain position and echoed state party officials’ explanation that other political figures are known by the their full names.