One of the better analysis of Obama and Wright today by Stanley Kurtz:
Remember when we were hearing about the need to purge Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd from the Democratic Party? Obama is the polar opposite of all that–and in a devilishly clever way. Rather than move the Democrats away from the Michael Moores or Jeremiah Wrights, Obama buys absolution for them from the rest of the country. No, Obama does not fully agree with Jeremiah Wright, but the Democratic Party under Obama will be complacent about its Michael Moore wing. That’s why the MoveOn types are so excited about Obama. There will be plenty of the most left-leaning appointees staffing the federal bureaucracy and set into judgeships under Obama, and all of it will be smoothed over by speeches about national healing and understanding pain. Under Obama, the Michael Moore-MoveOn wing, far from being purged, will be in the catbird seat, and all because they’ve found the perfect spokesman.
Obama says he’s too close, and too personally indebted to Wright, to break with him. But how did he get close to Wright to begin with? Wright could not have taken up so huge a space in Obama’s life unless Obama had let Wright in. And Obama let Wright in because of Wright’s sermons, not in spite of them. Obama may not have agreed with Wright’s solutions, or even with his final judgements, but something about Wright’s anger had to have attracted Obama–had to have seemed tantalizingly “authentic.” From the beginning, Obama had to have been sufficiently attracted to Wright’s excesses to forgive them. Then he sought to draw closer. In this positive attraction to anti-American anger (even if that anger is not quite entirely shared) Obama embodies the sensibilities of the elite academic radicals that are his real heritage and milieu.
Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism–all under the guise of achieving national unity. The real precedent here is Jimmy Carter sitting next to Michael Moore at the Democratic National Convention. Does Carter endorse everything Michael Moore says? I doubt it. If pressed, would Carter in fact condemn some of what Moore has said? Most likely. But in the end, Carter stood with Moore and put an acceptable face on what should in fact be considered unacceptable. Of course, even that doesn’t begin to compare to Obama’s decades-long association with Wright, and his decision, for years, to place Wright at the core of his political identity.
MoveOn loves the speech, of course. It explains it all in their eyes because, well, there really was nothing to explain anyways. Black hate towards whites is justified and must be acknowledged you see…..
Those who loved themselves some Obama will love him now. Those who saw him as dangerous before will see him just as dangerous now.
But what of those who didn’t love him or hate him? Who were agnostic about the man….Will this Wright/Obama love affair move them away from Obama?
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Agnostic here. Not voting for him before, not voting for him now… I did take the time to read the speech. Most people are either fawning over it or distorting it.
If empty rhetoric enters empty brains does it really make an impression?
Igor…LOL! Good one.
Obama delivered an eloquent speech, framing exactly why he is *what* he is. A socialist candidate who feels white America quashed the dreams of the downtrodden (of all races), tho he is not one of them himself. He stated that racism is “grounded in legitimate concerns”, and suggests that government and social welfare reforms, under his leadership alone, is the only answer.
In short, Obama is the candidate of victims, seeking to unite his constituency by race and financial class.
While his speech did not reflect any changes in his stand on the issues, it did confirm one nagging suspicion that I had… and that separates him from Hillary He is a black man first, focused on the black and minority agenda, and an American second. And that, to me, is unacceptable as my POTUS.
i was a king a friend who is an obama supporter about his policies and his protecting this guiy and then disowning him. she freaked and asked me if i was a republican. does it make a difference? i want the answers to valid questions, what is the deal with him and his little cult of followers.
O’Bomber wants to “heal” the nation?
But, he had 20 years to “heal” Rev. Wright, and go nowhere.
If you can’t clean the poop from your own lawn, how are you going to clean it up in the park?
Perhaps what he REALLY want’s to do is to remove the grass and turn the whole thing into a big litter box. At least, that’s the only “solution” that’s consistent with his rhetoric, anyway.
Would I trust this man to be the President of the free world knowing he has just thrown his grandmother under the bus to gain his political position that continues to fill his empty suit?
I don’t think so. Obama is catering to the same principals that Carter and Clinton and many of the left use to bring race into the conversation as some “white-suppression” conspiracy that only the liberal left have the tools to provide, (more failed government-dependency-welfare programs), that some how blacks will emerge from their oppression. How many more generations will it take for Black America to wake up to the bullshit rhetoric that liberals use to make themselves feel good about themselves while promising some new government program that will pull Blacks from their conceived suppression?
Obama’s embracement of Wrights screeds only solidifies his socialist mentality that a diverse society can only be mended by government intervention. With Obama’s speech today, he has solidified a large percentage of the black vote while providing no change in the status quo. But who’s surprised?
Along with Obama’s gift of gab, he has been well schooled. Schooled in how to talk to the “man” without the “man” realizing he is actually being talked about.
Combine that with the left-wing socialism and we have a loaded weapon running for president.
Obama was hand-picked. Those who chose him, knew what they were doing.
One thing nobody’s commenting on either side… Obama did state that the welfare state contributed to the decline of the black community, not what you’d expect to hear from a democrat.
I thought that Mike Huckabee’s comments were rather interesting.
Christine, that’s right, no sudden movements and a polite attitude will endear one to the “man” in a flash. You have to be either totally sincere or totally cynical to be able to come across as totally sincere. And somehow I don’t think Obama is all THAT sincere.
Found a transcript of Huckabee’s comments. This is from Joe Scarborough’s show…
I thought that Mike Huckabee’s comments were interesting; as a former pastor, he “gets it” in a way that most of us cannot. Here’s an excerpt:
—-begin quote—-
HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.
Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS…
HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you’re not. I know you’re not. I’m just wondering though, for a lot of people…Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?
HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what’s the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.
HUCKABEE: I don’t think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it’s not October. It’s March. And I don’t believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.
And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: It’s the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going “boy, there is some deep resentment there.”
—-end quote—
The following quote comes from the Blog OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY “Like Greenwald, I viewed the Wright controversy as “relatively petty.” But others have the right to disagree.
Obama’s youth, energy, charisma, and oratorical skill could easily propel him to the White House. I wouldn’t be shocked if he won several states that went “Red” in 2000 and 2004 and thus contributed to a realignment of American politics. But a personality based campaign can implode if people doubt the character of the candidate. Fundamentally, this is a visceral issue rather than an intellectual one. Either you trust Obama and regard him as a uniting force or you don’t. And falling into the latter camp doesn’t make you venal or stupid.
UPDATE: Kevin Drum disagrees on two scores:
As good as Obama’s speech was, it’s naive not to also understand it as the political tool it was meant to be. And on that score, I’d say that the Obama supporters James points to are doing precisely what Obama intended: trying to take Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments off the table by implying that anyone who still insists on talking about them must be either a simpleton or a racist. He’s basically daring the Sean Hannitys of the world to continue demagoging Wright, and making a savvy bet that the rest of the press will line up behind him to agree that the real issue isn’t Wright, it’s racism and its complex historical legacy. And anyone who doesn’t agree is either a partisan hack or a hopeless primitive.
If so, it’s a losing bet. Calling half the country simpletons and racists is not a way to win an election (or unite the country my addition). It may stifle the debate, because of the powerful chilling effect of the race card in American political discourse, but it’ll resonate quite differently in the privacy of the voting booth.
Obama has embraced Wright while distancing himself from his most incendiary comments. That’s fine. But people have a right not to be satisfied with a very convoluted explanation about why he sat in those pews for two decades.”
I don’t believe Senator Obama is an anti American racist as is Pastor Wright. Wright has publicly stated that Black Liberation Theology is the foundation for his ministry and wholeheartedly endorses James Cone on the subject. Cone has state when asked were his BLT has been adopted and practiced, “at Trinity”
. Cone states:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love
Senator Obama needs to explain how his twenty years with Wright preaching BLT, mentoring him in BLT, counseling him from BLT prospective has molded his world and life view. We have seen in Michelle Obama’s comments that her views have been shaped by this radical theology.
When the Senator stated he had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war, was this some superior capability or simply his applying the lessons learned under Wright tutelage- America is an oppressive white government and Iraq was one more oppression of non white people? That is the type question we need answered.
I f the Senator was a twenty year member of a radically pacifist, unilateral disarmament church don’t the votes have a right to know how that church attendance has shaped his views and how the church doctrine would influence his decision make and foreign policy actions? Of course it would.
We can’t take the Senator’s association with Wright and his church off the table just because it raises the race issue. The Senator needs to explain his views and not try to equate his grandmother with Wright as that makes everything alright.