Obama smoking cigarette? Arizona GOP prints doctored Obama photo in health care reform fight (VIDEO)

August 19, 5:49 PMPost-Partisan ExaminerD.K. Jamaal

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The two images in question. The original photo is on the right.

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The Arizona Republican party is in hot water this week for publishing a photo of President Obama smoking a cigarette.

The photo was used in on a state party magazine cover blasting Obama’s embattled effort to push what the White House is now calling “health insurance reform” through a recalcitrant and divided Congress.

The headline printed with the photograph read:

“Broken promises, rampant government spending, and Chicago-style politics have marred the first 200 days of the Obama Presidency according to Arizona Republican Chairman Randy Pullen.”

While Obama has indeed broken a plethora of promises – not least the least of which was to unambiguously support an optional public health care plan – and while Obama’s unchecked spending has driven up the deficit to sickening levels, it would still behoove the Arizona GOP to check the sources of their photos.

The photo of Obama with the cigarette dangling from his mouth is a classic Photoshop disaster, culled from an original taken by one Kwame Ross at a University of Illinois campus visit during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign. 

The widespread availability of the doctored photo likely deceived the Arizona Republican Party officials into assuming it was real, as this digital hoax has been circulating online long enough -- almost two years -- to make it seem like a stock photo.

Obama has been forthright about the difficulty of weaning himself off cigarettes, but the photo on the cover of AZGOP newsmagazine is not evidentiary of the President's personal battle with nicotine addiction.

For more info: 1) CLICK HERE to see how attacks on Obama from the right are succeeding spectacularly. Then, 2) CLICK HERE to see why Bill Clinton thinks Obama shold ignore the GOP completely.

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