PHOENIX (By Jon Garrido, Blue Dogs) May 2, 2008 — For 17 years, Barack Obama listened to Jeremiah Wright's sermons. No one can possibly believe after listening to 17 years of preaching, Obama never heard Wright preach one anti-American statement.
"If someone puts Obama in church on some day Wright said an anti-American statement against white people such as injecting blacks with AIDS, Obama is toast," claims Jon Garrido.
For Obama to state he was not aware of anti-American statements can not be true.
It was Obama who rescinded the invitation to Wright to deliver the invocation at the Obama announcement to become a candidate for President of the United States.
The evening before the announcement, Wright answered his cell phone and heard an apologetic soon-to-be candidate tell Wright, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons. Rather than have you out front, we thought it would be best to not have you do the invocation."
Obama had just reviewed a profile of Obama Rolling Stone had just published that included some colorful snippets from the pastor’s sermons.
Obama then asked whether the Rev. Otis Moss III, who would soon succeed Wright at Trinity, could speak instead. Wright agreed, even offering to call the younger preacher.
"Actually, we’ve already called him," Obama told him.
A few minutes later, Wright got his daughters on the telephone line. "I’m only going to say this once,” he said. "Don’t look at TV tomorrow.”
Mr. Moss declined the invitation.
On April 29, Obama was asked whether the Wright fiasco should raise questions about his judgment, Obama did not directly answer, saying, "I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency.”
This is not true because Obama did vet the pastor prior to announcing he was running for president resulting in Obama bumping Wright from giving the invocation at the 2007 invocation to announce Obama was running for president.
Just yesterday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen noted a magazine associated with Trinity United once named Louis Farrakhan as its person of the year, praising the Nation of Islam leader. Cohen called on Obama to denounce such praise of Farrakhan, known for statements deemed anti-Semitic.
In a statement released by his campaign last night, Obama responded to questions about Wright's comments on Sunday.
"As I've told Reverend Wright, personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church," Obama said. "I don't think of the pastor of my church in political terms." This confirms Obama knew about the personal attacks.
"Like a member of my own family, there are things he says at times with which I deeply disagree," he said. "But as he prepares to retire, that doesn't detract from my affection for Reverend Wright or appreciation for the good works he has done."
Hispanic News Election Analysis
Much has been written by others but this Obama/Wright analysis is a first for Hispanic News. For the record, on July 27, 2007, Hispanic News endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. We believe Clinton is the best presidential candidate.
Hispanic News also acknowledges Obama's numbers presently give him a higher probability of obtaining the nomination but the nomination process is far from over.
There is still time for Clinton to move ahead with 9 more primary states to vote. Obama has begun sliding downward and Clinton is slowly picking up momentum. The latest polls show fifty-one percent of Democratic voters say they expect Obama to win their party’s nomination, down from 69 percent a month ago. Forty-eight percent of Democrats say Obama is the candidate with the best chance of beating Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, down from 56 percent a month ago.
The Obama decline began with Pennsylvania when the blue collar vote including women and Catholics overwhelming voted for Clinton.
These are now becoming key constituents to win the Presidency in 2008 and the Hispanic vote will be key in turning the George Bush tide from 40% in 2004 to now vote for Clinton. Hispanic News projects an astonishing 70% of the Hispanic vote will vote for Clinton to obtain Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009. For this reason, Hispanics have a lot riding on Clinton to win the 2008 presidential election to obtain the White House.
If Obama becomes the 2008 nominee, Hispanics will probably sit out the 2008 election enabling John McCain to pick up the few votes Hispanics cast. This will give the presidency to John "got the message" McCain who will end up promoting a security first immigration bill without citizenship. McCain wants two terms as President so he needs to pacify the "Lou Dobbs" constituents to win again in 2012.
Last month, Adelfa Callejo, a longtime Hispanic activist in Texas who supports Clinton, suggested Hispanic voters would never accept Obama because of his race. "They never really supported us, and there’s a lot of hard feelings about that," Callejo said.
Hispanic News has always believed Clinton has a higher probability of beating McCain that Obama. Now with the Wright fiasco, if Obama does win the nomination, he will loose the 2008 election because Republicans will use Wright controversy to defeat Obama.
Republican McCain supporters are drooling over the future use of Wright political ads to attack Obama.
This is why the Obama/Wright controversy is so damaging to the Democratic Party and winning the 2008 presidential election. Wright has already begun to deflate Obama's balloon these last few weeks which is welcomed by Hispanics before the Denver convention.
Out of Context? You Decide
The Wright sermons reveal uncomfortable questions about Obama ties to the minister, whom conservative critics have accused of advocating black separatism.
In the sermon, delivered five days after the 9/11 attacks, Wright claims the United States was to blame for the bombing the World Trade Center.
Wright preached, "We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians, and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards! America’s chickens are coming home — to roost."
In a later sermon, Wright revisits the theme, declaring, "No, no, no, not God bless America — God damn America!” In a fiery sermon taped and available on DVD, Barack Obama’s longtime pastor and spiritual adviser can be seen and heard saying three times: "God damn America.”
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., in his taped sermons, also questioned America’s role in the spread of the AIDS virus. The pastor said, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”
In a fiery sermon in April 2003, Wright said: "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.
"No! No No!
"God damn America … for killing innocent people.
"God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.
"God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”
During a Christmas sermon, Wright tried to compare Obama’s upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans.
Another videotape of one sermon captures Wright using a harsh racial epithet to argue Clinton could not understand the struggles of African Americans.
"Barack knows what it means, living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said on Christmas Day of last year. "Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger! Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”
In a January 13 sermon, Wright said, "Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."
Wright recently retired from the church. He became an issue in Obama's presidential bid when videos circulated of Wright condemning the U.S. government for allegedly racist and genocidal acts. In the videos, some several years old, Wright called on God to "damn America." He also said the government created the AIDS virus to destroy "people of color."
The problem with Obama's defense of Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of African Americans. Wright is a political extremist holding views shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.
These accusation do not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. Wright has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil.
But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And Wright's pastoral teaching may put lives at risk because the virus that causes AIDS spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.
Obama's speech implied these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" — both are the foibles of family. But while Obama's Grandma may have had issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.
Wright once solemnly preached he would recite 10 essential facts about the United States, "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college. Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" Wright has a cadence and power that makes Obama sound like John Kerry. Now Wright begins to preach, "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax. "And. And. And Gawd has got to be sick of this shit!"
This was more than a year ago.
At a news conference, Obama denounced remarks Wright made in a series of televised appearances over the last several days. In the appearances, Wright has suggested the United States was attacked because it engaged in terrorism on other people and the government was capable of having used the AIDS virus to commit genocide against minorities. His remarks also cast Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, in a positive light.
Prior to his retirement last month, Wright delivered commentary from the pulpit in which he praised Obama, as well as remarks focusing on the racial divide between Obama and Clinton.
What did Obama know then and what did he just all of a sudden learn?
Barack Obama stated on Keith Obermans’s show "The Countdown," "Hannity and Colmes,” and on "360 With Anderson Cooper" in the over twenty years while he was attending the Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama never heard his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, make the type of inflammatory remarks from the pulpit that have been splashed across the news media and the internet the last day or two.
Barrack Obama claims he never heard remarks like this from his pastor when he was attending church but Senator Obama does not have to be present to hear these comments. If you are part of any social group that is part of the church, all you have to do is talk to one of your friends and they will fill you in. The church also has a system of recording the pastor’s sermons, and distributing them to the congregants that were not present on Sunday. The Church also plays achieved sermons right on line on their website.
Wright use militant speech designed to incite people and to make them believe there is some type of fabricated cause to fight for. Obama has been attending this church for seventeen years, and had to be affected by this type of radical speech designed to divide people, not bring them together. If Obama didn’t agree with his minister’s philosophy, then why would he remain as part of the congregation?
Is it really possible for Obama to consider Wright his spiritual compass and advisor if he didn’t agree with Wright’s views? If Obama wasn’t affected by this type of speech, then his wife certainly was as evidenced by her comment: "I am just now proud of my country for the first time." How about his kids — did they attend church with their parents and listen to the hateful speech of their minister? If they did, or even if they didn’t, but they internalize their mother’s disgust for this country, which she may have gotten from listening to her minister, they will grow up to be prejudiced against whites, or be anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian. Whether their father is President of the United States or not they will grow to hate their country.
The biggest question — why didn’t Obama just leave the church? This type of hate speech didn’t start in the last year or so. It was going on for a long time. If he disagrees with this speech now, then why didn’t he disagree with during the 17 years Obama was a member of this church? Obama does agree with this rhetoric and he has heard it before but now that Obama is running for president, and he is changing his tune.
Obama: Don’t tell me words don’t matter
Hilary Clinton recently commented on the eloquence of Barack Obama’s speech and made it clear speeches don’t solve problems. She said, "There’s a big difference between us — speeches versus solutions, talk versus action. You know, some people may think words are change. But you and I know better. Words are cheap. I know it takes work.” Clinton has argued while Obama provides rousing speeches, she has the stronger grasp of the issues and the knowledge of how to use the presidency to start making changes from "day one.”
Obama then responded to those statements and may have started a discussion that will be the death nail in his attempts to win the democratic nomination for president. He responded with, "Don’t tell me words don’t matter! I have a dream. Just words. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Just words. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Just words, just speeches!”
Obama contends words and speeches do matter. If that’s the case, how come sermons, filled with hateful anti-American words, spoken by Obama’s minister from the pulpit in Obama’s church never mattered enough for Obama to condemn them until now? Unless Obama agreed with the words he heard, which is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn. What a man says is directly related to the ideas, opinions and thoughts he carries around with him on a daily basis. Obama calls Wright his spiritual mentor, he has had dinner with him at his house, his minister married him and his wife, and he baptized his children. What words did Wright use when he was either socializing with him or advising him, or counseling him outside of church? Obama has recently denounced the statements his pastor has made, but how can anyone believe Obama is being sincere? I also am not convinced this was the first time Obama heard these words. I am mostly worried about how much of this hateful speech Obama has allowed into his own soul. The country needs to realize Obama is going through a spiritual battle right now and may be unable to determine his true position on his pastor’s remarks. If he is double minded in his thinking, he will be double minded in all of his ways. The damage has been done.
Obama said, "I gave Wright the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining he's done enormous good. But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."
Some excerpts from Jeremiah Wright's appearance Monday:
On Barack Obama's rebuke: "If Barack Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected."
Senator Barack Obama broke forcefully on Tuesday with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., in an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture.
"His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Obama said, his voice welling with anger. "They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs."
One week before Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, contests that party officials are watching as they try to gauge whether Obama or Clinton would be the stronger nominee, the controversy surrounding Wright again erupted into a threat to Obama’s ability to show he could unify the Democratic Party and bring the nominating contest to a quick and clean end. With Clinton having shown particular strength among working-class white voters in recent big-state primaries, the racial overtones of Obama’s links with Wright have been especially troublesome for the Obama campaign.
Obama denounces Rev. Wright's latest comments
It was the second straight day Obama had responded to Wright whose derisive comments about the United States government have become a fixture of cable television. Saying he had not seen or read Wright’s remarks when he responded to them on Monday, Obama said he was "shocked and surprised" when he later read the transcripts and watched the broadcasts, and he felt compelled to respond more forcefully.
"I’m outraged by the comments made and saddened over the spectacle we saw yesterday," Obama said. He added: "I find these comments appalling. It contradicts everything I’m about and who I am."
As Wright’s more incendiary statements began circulating widely, Obama routinely condemned them but did not disassociate himself from Wright. In his speech in Philadelphia, Obama tried to explain his pastor through the bitter history of American race relations.
The Democratic presidential candidate says his former minister's 'ridiculous propositions' about AIDS and the 9/11 attacks contradict 'everything I'm about and who I am.'
Calling Wright's most recent comments "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth," a visibly angered Obama accused his former pastor of enjoying his recent three-day media blitz — topped by Monday's appearance at the National Press Club — at the expense of the campaign and the issues that confront voters.
Wright first became an issue in the Obama campaign last month when video clips surfaced of some of his most controversial sermons. Obama, in response, gave a major speech in Philadelphia on race relations, saying he denounced the pastor's ideas but not the man.
Today, remarking "I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency," Obama said Wright's latest comments "offend me, rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. That's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today."
"The outrageousness of his performance during the question-and-answer period yesterday shocked me," Obama said. "I don't think anybody could attribute those beliefs to me."
Sen. Barack Obama said he is "outraged" by comments his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made Monday at the National Press Club and is "saddened by the spectacle."
Obama said he is outraged by Wright's remarks that seemed to suggest the U.S. government might be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community and his equation of some American wartime efforts with terrorism.
"What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing," Obama said, adding Wright had shown "little regard for me" and seemed more concerned with "taking center stage."
Obama said Wright's comments were not only "divisive and destructive," but they "end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate."
Now Rev. Wright comes forward and says many intensely divisive things, particularly along racial lines. That's exactly the opposite of what Barack Obama is trying to achieve in his life and in his campaign, so he made a very powerful effort today to distance himself and denounce Wright's comments.
Obama said Monday Wright's remarks were "antithetical to our campaign; it was antithetical to what we're about."
Asked whether he would continue attending the church, Obama said "As of this point, I am a member of Trinity."
On Monday, Clinton said she would not have remained a member of the church under similar circumstances.
But after watching three days of Wright’s commentary in televised speeches and interviews, Obama said, "There are no excuses.”
"They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced,” he said. "That’s what I am doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”
Today, the comments by Obama were considerably stronger than any previous remarks he has made about Wright.
Asked why the change in posture, Obama said he had not seen the televised comments until last night. When he did, he said they "shocked and surprised" him, and he decided to clarify his position.
The incident with Wright comes as Obama is seeking to persuade Democratic Party leaders he is the strongest nominee to challenge Senator John McCain in the general election. Supporters of Obama feared the wall-to-wall coverage of the comments — as well as the injection once again of race into the campaign — could weaken his position in the nominating fight with Clinton.
"What particularly angered me is his suggestion somehow my previous denunciation of his remarks was somehow political posturing,” Obama said. "Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I’m about knows I’m about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people."
Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the Web site of the conservative magazine National Review, wrote Friday that "now we know Obama contributed money to, voluntarily listened to, and publicly defended a cleric who peddles racial warfare."
Why are sermons an issue now?
Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: Words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his angry pastor to argue words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.
Obama's speech in Philadelphia yesterday made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned Wright's views in strong language — and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and "shocking ignorance" of the African American experience — and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger — and argued the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda.
The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church — a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church's pastor attacked the U.S. government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists see as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, the candidate attending this church lacked judgment and his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.
In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright has the opposite problem: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.
King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. Hate distorts the personality. The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."
Contradiction and Poor Judgment, Two Peas in Pod
Barack Obama is not a man who says he hates — but he chose to walk with a man who does.
Obama’s campaign failed to answer repeated questions from media organizations yesterday about whether Wright was still a member of his African American religious leadership committee. Instead, he issued a statement categorically denouncing "inflammatory and appalling remarks Wright made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents”.
Stressing he had not been present when Wright made the offending statements, Obama said he had become aware of them just over a year ago and had remained part of the church only because the pastor was retiring. He added: "He has never been my political adviser; he’s been my pastor.”
There is, however, growing alarm within the Democratic Party over the apparent polarization of voters along lines of gender, class and, especially, race in recent primaries. Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, suggested this week if Obama could not win over Pennsylvania’s largely white and heavily Catholic vote next month, he would not be able to win the general election in November.
Just What Did Obama Know About Wright's Past Sermons?
In his Friday night cable mea culpas on the incendiary comments made by his spiritual adviser Wright, Obama repeatedly said, "I wasn't in church during the time these statements were made. I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the social gospel. If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit."
Obama told CNN that he "didn't know about all these statements. I knew about one or two of these statements that had been made. One or two statements would not lead me to distance myself from either my church or my pastor. If I had thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then yes, I don't think it would have been reflective of my values. If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn’t feel comfortable there."
But according to a New York Times story from a year ago, the Obama campaign rescinded the invitation to Wright from delivering a public invocation at Obama's candidacy announcement.
"Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” Obama said in the statement. "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Wright that are at issue."
Amid calls to fully repudiate Wright, the Obama campaign said late Thursday it has distanced itself from certain Wright comments.
But Obama’s longtime relationship with Wright is continuing to spark controversy.
"This is not just someone Obama has a casual relationship with," said Tom Bevan, executive editor of RealClearPolitics.com. He noted Wright married Barack and Michelle Obama, and Wright’s words were the inspiration for the title of Obama’s book, "The Audacity of Hope."
"Barack Obama has not out and out distanced himself from all of these comments," Patricia Murphy, editor of CitizenJanePolitics.com, said before the campaign responded Friday. "It’s unclear if he rejects all of these statements. I would assume he does, but I think he is going to be pushed where he needs to come out and fully explain his relationship with his pastor."
So far the Clinton campaign has been quiet over Wright’s comments.
Jeremiah Wright: Barack Obama’s Achilles Heel?
The problem for Barack Obama is not necessarily his association with Wright, but the extent of that association.
According to the New Yorker, the Obamas gave $22,000 to Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ as recently as 2006, a level of support that could easily be seen as tantamount to an endorsement of the reverend’s controversial views.
The most troubling part of the whole Barack Obama — Jeremiah Wright affair is that it appears to continue what is increasingly starting to look like a troubling pattern of behavior on Obama’s part. Throughout this campaign season, Obama has asked voters to take him at his word, while his actions have suggested otherwise. It is called the 'that’s not me" argument.
In South Carolina, Barack Obama asked the LGBT community to accept the idea his choice to have homophobic, ex-gay singer Donnie McClurkin perform at one of his campaign fundraisers did not reflect his personal feelings about issues of concern gays and lesbians. In other words he was basically saying I welcome the support of the homophobic, but 'that’s not me.’
About campaign supporter and friend, indicted real estate magnate, Tony Rezko, who allegedly assisted him in purchasing his Chicago home along with an adjoining lot, Obama simply said, "It was a boneheaded move." Translation: C’mon guys you know me, I’m the little guy…’that’s not me.’
Now Obama says to voters he "deeply disagrees" with the pastor he calls his "spiritual mentor" and whose church he continues to both financially support and attend with his wife and impressionable young daughters. Again Obama seems to saying, "That’s them, that’s not me."
It’s all starting to sound a little too familiar. Actually, with the Wright affair it is starting to wear painfully thin.
Recalling the former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott remark he made in 2002 at the 100th birthday party of notoriously racist South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. Of Thurmond and his ill-fated run for the presidency on a platform of racial segregation back in 1948, Lott said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."
The righteous outrage that ensued following those comments was deafening and fifteen days after making them — Trent Lott rightfully resigned. Lott learned the hard way that guilt by association can be quite the damning thing.
In a campaign as tense as the one in which Clinton and Obama are currently engaged, harsh words will be said. That’s politics.
Though no political candidate can be held accountable for what his or her supporters, family and acquaintances may do or say, every human being can be held accountable for the choices they make.
Now it’s Obama’s turn to make a choice of his own with respect to Wright. For years, Obama has chosen to tie his faith to a church and a pastor whose racially charged belief system and anti-Semitic ties appear at odds with the message of hope and change upon which his campaign is founded. In order to move beyond this, it seems Obama’s only option is to categorically denounce the Trinity United Church of Christ and his beloved Wright. But will he? Or will he stick to the "that’s not me" argument. Time will tell.
GOP see potential weapon
Earlier Friday, Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said Wright would no longer serve in an unpaid and largely ceremonial role on Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee.
But Republicans pounced on the speech, saying Obama's measured criticism didn't go far enough and promising to invoke Wright early and often should Obama win the nomination.
"I think it's an obligation of any opponent to use this issue, to make Wright a centerpiece of the campaign," said Rep. Peter King.
"His speech was disappointing and shameful," King added. “This goes to the heart of who Barack Obama is. He's trying to say he represents the 21st-century view on race and here he's sticking up for this guy."
Added pollster Ayres: "The problem is the contradiction between the fundamental message of the Obama campaign about bringing America together and Wright's hate-filled, divisive message."
Are we to believe on the first Sunday after 9/11 — when many Americans crowded into churches looking to mourn, looking for answers, looking for community — Barack Obama decided to skip church?
How in the world can the same media that roundly condemned George W. Bush in 2000 because he "stood uncritically" at Bob Jones University now accept this crazy-uncle defense? ABC's George Stephanopoulos suggested Bush's standard stump speech there made him a "Kamikaze conservative." That was a single moment on Bush's campaign schedule. Barack Obama's been attending his crazy uncle's church for 20 years; that crazy uncle married him and baptized his children, too.
Once these statements hit the airwaves, Obama repudiated them but then suggested those mean-spirited conservatives were at it again. "I noticed over the last several weeks the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," Obama declared. But the "forces of division" were right there within his campaign — until Obama expelled his minister from his African American religious leadership team.
Obama looks phony either way. Either he missed all of these sermons, meaning his "devout Christian" talk on CBS doesn't match his church attendance record, or he sincerely thinks that hateful, race-baiting, America-bashing sermons are part of a pleasant Sunday worship experience. The press has an obligation to pursue this.
If Obama really meant any of this rhetoric about healing racial divisions — in any of his speeches over many months of campaigning — he would have quit his hate-spewing minister and his Church of Slurs a long time ago. If the media ever meant to be fair and balanced instead of a real-life comedy sketch full of slavish Obama myth-builders, they would have found this story a long time ago.
Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting U.S. policy for the attacks of September 11 and generally lashing out against white America, GOP strategists believe they’ve finally found an antidote to Obamamania.
In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base.
In fact, the video trove has convinced some, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, they may actually have easier prey.
“For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their first choice," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who recently worked for Mitt Romney’s campaign.
Even Obama’s much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion Republicans had been given a rare political gift.
"It was a speech written to the New York Times editorial board, the network production people and the media into submission. Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest,” said GOP media consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the ad in 2002 tying then-Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. "Not good enough."
Until now, questions about Obama’s allegiance to country had been largely confined to the fever swamps of the Internet and e-mail chains. They took the form of dark whispers about the greater meaning of Obama’s failure to put his hand over his heart during one national anthem, his decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and, at their most toxic, the outright lie he’s a Muslim or some sort of Manchurian candidate.
With Michelle Obama’s comments last month she was, thanks to her husband’s candidacy, for the first time "really proud of her country," the topic entered the more mainstream elements of the conservative conversation, ricocheting across talk radio, cable news and blogs.
"All the sudden you’ve got two dots and two dots make a line,” said Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is and it’s not the Obama you thought — he’s not the Tiger Woods of politics.”
But if Michelle Obama’s gaffe caused some ripples in the right-wing pond, the Wright videos have detonated the equivalent of a daisy cutter on the conservative landscape, awakening an otherwise dispirited party base.
"I usually get three or four emails a week on Obama," said Michigan Republican chairman Saul Anuzis Monday. "Today I received more than 10 — all of them on his minister."
Among the e-mails Anuzis received was a link to a mash-up video splicing together Wright’s most extreme comments, Michelle Obama’s statement, footage of Obama not putting his hand over his heart during the anthem at a political event and images of Malcolm X and the two black Olympians in 1968 who raised their fists in the "black power" salute set to the iconic rap song by Public Enemy "Fight the Power."
The video, titled "Is Obama Wright," is described as being produced by something called "NHaleMedia," apparently just a dummy Web site set up to produce anonymous and home-made videos.
In effect, the pastor has done what many on the right, quivering even with the anonymity afforded by the online era, had hesitated over until now-thrust highly delicate matters of patriotism and race into the political dialogue.
“It opens up an entire new vein," said Republican consultant Paul Wilson.
Just as with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, Republican strategists view the Wright flap as deeply damaging to Obama because it strikes at the message, or set of principles, at the heart of his candidacy.
In Obama’s case, the core of his appeal has been that he transcends race and is more inclined toward conciliation than combat.
“He wants the authentic black image but he also wants to keep all his safe, suburban Obamacans in line,” said Rick Wilson. "Well, you can’t have both — they’re mutually exclusive."
“This is a guy who associates with some real haters," he added.
Perhaps most damaging for Obama, his opponents now have the powerful video to make that case.
“It’s harder for people to say it’s taken out of context because these are Wright’s own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry that employed the use of their target’s own language when he returned from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own conclusions."
"You don’t have to say that he’s unpatriotic, you don’t question his patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you with that footage you don’t have to say it."
Asked if they would say it or even suggest it, a spokesman for McCain indicated that the GOP candidate would not.
"There are profound differences on enormously important issues that will affect the future of the country," said McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. "He’s said he intends to campaign on those issues."
McCain’s hesitance to go anywhere near the Wright videos speaks to just how explosive they could be among voters — but also to his awareness of the potential for a backlash.
"He needs to stay away from it," said Paul Wilson of McCain. "It’s poison."
But thanks to the power of new media forces — talk radio, cable TV and blogs — to drive a storyline, McCain’s job could easily be done for him.
"The best thing the GOP can do is stay out of it," suggested Jim Dyke, a former RNC communications chief who was a key figure in the behind-the-scenes takedown of Kerry in ’04. "Why risk getting shot by running into the middle of a circular firing squad?"
And to interfere may obscure the attack, added Castellanos. "Leave it alone — the last thing you want is to make it a partisan Republican attack. It’s much more credible on its own."
Yet some conservatives aren’t content to let the video played out organically, spread via "did-you-see-this?" e-mails-especially if it’s revealed Obama was in fact in the church when Wright delivered some of his more incendiary remarks. The temptation to craft an ad may be overwhelming.
Material from AP, MSNBC, McClatchy, Washington Post, New York Times and LA Times