Posted by
Conservative Soldier on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 2:07:55 PM
By The Conservative Soldier:
The mainstream media this morning reminds me of a room full of Howard Deans, unleashing a collective primal scream, in perfect disharmony.
What we were saying here 48 hours ago, the drive-by media (as Rush Limbaugh so aptly tags it) is only now discovering, which is that one Wright represents a lot of wrongs and a world of trouble for the formerly presumptive Democrat Presidential choice, Sen. Barrack H. Obama (D-IL).
Obama is no longer actually running for President. He is running from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former and, now permanently exiled, pastor/friend/mentor.
Obama's past association with Wright was all but a "third rail" topic only a few weeks ago. Many in the media, and fellow liberal consumers of said media, seemed to agree that questioning Obama's fitness to be President based on his membership in Wright's Chicago church was unfair, not relevant, a race-card play.
Wright's words, they said, were not in context. The hateful sermon passages unearthed by Fox's Sean Hannity were atypical of Wright and not a reflection of the mindset of the congregation.
Eventually, we all might have believed this conventional wisdom had it not been for Wright's inability to keep his mouth shut, to shun a chance to fuel his emerging celebrity status. Obama nearly wiggled out of Wright's clutches and was just on the verge of turning his campaign back into a conversation with America about health care, the economy, the war on terror and energy dependence/fuel prices.
Instead, Wright backed Obama to the edge on Monday with his arrogant, divisive remarks before the National Press Club's assembled guests. We said it then and there: Wright may be Obama's former pastor but he is in no way his former problem.
It was obvious that Wright was mad as hell that Obama tried to minimize his relationship to Wright. And it was obvious that Wright's extremist views, his contempt for America, for white people and the media, was not born of recent shifts in doctrine but has been the core of Wright's identity for years -- for the 20 years of Obama's on-and-off attendance in his church.
Suddenly, after another Obama denunciation press conference, after another "I was against it after I was for it" moment in American politics, the mainstreamers are waking up. Guess Obama should have called out Wright a long time ago. Guess it was a miscalculation to dismiss the cantankerous old pastor as a "crazy uncle" in the family but nothing more. Guess we know more about Obama's inclinations when he is about to take a political IED on the side of the road leading to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (He will not just distance, he will disown).
The Chicago Sun-Times this morning on its front page promoted reaction to Obama's bail-out by not one or two, but six, columnists inside the paper. Most of them took up the theme, "Hey, Barack, what took you so long?" For some of these paid pundits, the light just went on, I suppose. For a lot of voters in a general election, character matters and character is reflected by the company one keeps.
Obama's emergency press conference is another reflection. It is patently disingenuous of Obama to "unequivocally" denounce his ex-pastor after, and only after, Wright re-stirred the pot.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are campaigning for the Presidency, too, lest we forget. They are talking about their plans to right (without the "W" and post-W) the U.S. economy. McCain is doing a town hall on health care today. While they campaign, Obama, you get the feeling, waits for the next shoe to drop, or, in the case of Obama's ties to professed domestic terrorist William Ayers, the next shoe-bomb.
The clearest gauge of how severe the Wright setback is and will be is found on the home page of the Real Clear Politics web site today. Its digest of Wednesday media reports from newspapers, magazines and blogs, lists six stories about Obama-Wright (the top six), plus one on Ayers, along with a few about the economy and one about McCain.
Wright has to be loving this.