Soccer Dad

Watching sen. obama

Because of the number of Watcher's Council entries dealing with Rev. Wright and Sen. Obama, I decided to break of those entries for a separate post. The rest of the Watcher's Council nominations are here.

In Obama Shucks and Jives On Jeremiah Wright, Joshuapundit looks at the circumstances of Sen. Obama's claims about Rev. Wright and finds quite a few of them to be less than likely (or perhaps I should write, less than honest.) The most obvious being that Sen. Obama didn't know the content of Rev. Wright's sermons but still disinvited him from the inauguration of his campaign.

Wolf Howling covers much similar territory in Hypocrisy and Obaminations (Update 3). He adds a dimension observing that Sen. Obama's denials are not just difficult to believe, but reflect poorly on his character.

I'm an aficionado of a fine fisking and that's just what Rhymes With Right administers in Fisking the Obama Speech Point by point he examines the speech. When correct Rhymes with Right gives credit to Sen. Obama, but when the Senator was wrong he pulls no punches.

The way the fisking works, it also highlights something that Ross Douthat wrote

Of course John Derbyshire is right that Obama’s vision of how America ought to transcend our racial divisions is essentially left-wing, with whites and blacks joining hands to raise taxes and government spending, while uniting against their common enemy, the wicked axis of corporations, lobbyists and special interests. But Obama’s candidacy is essentially left-wing; he’s attempting to be a liberal Reagan, not a difference-splitter like Bill Clinton, and I think our political moment is tilting sufficiently leftward that he might just succeed.

By critiquing the speech piece by piece, Rhyme with Right allowed this aspect of Sen. Obama's candidacy to be seen more clearly. How do we fight racism? Not by criticizing Rev. Wright, but by implementing those programs that reduce the resentments that cause people to blame others.

This is the sole point of Seething by Cheat Seeking Missiles, who seeks out the Ashley story and zeros in on its implications.

In Should We Ignore Reverend Wright? Right Wing Nut House dismisses the importance of Rev. Wright's connection to Sen. Obama, but is bothered by the Senator's shading of the truth regarding his former pastor. The first part is similar to James Kirchik's observation at Contentions:

Given everything that is known about Barack Obama, and the totality of what he has written and said, there is absolutely no reason to believe that he adheres to the racial grievance theory of America articulated by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whatever the Clintons might want to imply.

But Kirchik, rather than focusing on the inconsistencies between Sen. Obama and what we know of his relationship with Rev. Wright, asks what does his acceptance of Wright's critique say about what his policy choices are likely to be.

I'm not comfortable with the assumption that Rev. Wright doesn't reflect Sen. Obama's views. Jeff Jacoby, I think, said it very well (via memeorandum)

The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long embraced, is a devotee not of King, - who in that same speech warned against "drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" - but of the poisonous hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously supported is a disciple not of King but of James Cone, founder of a "black liberation" theology that teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium.

watcher's council, barack obama, jeremiah wright.