Defending lies, Obama opens himself to Clinton surge
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
In dealing with the deeply flawed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton is either not nearly as smart as I have always thought she was, or even more devious.
Rather than remaining silent on the sidelines, Clinton should seize the banner for the nation’s 65,000 black churches and 23 million black churchgoers who do not share the worldview of Obama’s “God Damn America” spiritual mentor, the bigoted Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
In a Tuesday speech more artful than apt, Obama said he could not disown his pastor of 20 years any more than he could turn his back on his black community.
Think that through. Pastor Wright says the vilest things about America and white people and Obama must hang with him because, to do otherwise, would sunder him from the community of fellow blacks.
Hardly a pledge most Americans want to hear from a man who would be president of all the people.
That’s Hillary Clinton’s opening. She should take it.
Reverend Wright says our government created the Aids virus to destroy black people. The deaths of 3,000 human beings on 9-11 were “the chickens coming home to roost” for white America’s sins, he says. He has prayed openly in church, not for God’s blessing on our country, but that “God damn America.”
Unfortunately for Obama, all this and more is available in video sold openly in Obama’s church and copiously present on the Internet.
The speech itself reminded this writer of a long ago book about which a critic said of the author, “What he says is both new and exciting. But what is exciting is not new and what is new is not exciting.”
What was new was Obama’s multiple acknowledgements of impotence, failure and cowardice in the face of raging hatreds inside his minister and his church. Only when the facts came out in public has Obama faced up.
What was exciting but not new was the vision of the Reverend Martin Luther King enunciated Tuesday by Obama. Americans, however, didn’t need Obama’s oratory to thrill over Dr. King’s accomplishments, coming as it did in lieu of what was supposed to be the subject at hand: Who is Reverend Wright and who is Barack Obama?
Nor did we need the last 10 minutes of standard hard left liberalism, class hatreds and blame placement over education, health care and Iraq.
So dismal has been Obama’s obvious impotence before Dr. Wright’s racial hatreds in the name of God that when Obama mentioned Martin Luther King’s brave struggle this writer hoped someone might leap from the audience to say, “I knew Martin Luther King and you, sir, are no Martin Luther King.”
The setting for the speech was Obama alone behind a podium with American flags in the background. It was completely made to order for the political campaign – a speech, not a news conference; a friendly audience in a dignified setting delivering applause; no hecklers; no hectoring follow-up questions from reporters; no equal time granted to an opposing side.
The show was carried live on all networks and the cable news channels. It encapsulated the power behind Saturday Night Live skits about a worshipful news media “in the tank” for Obama. This writer’s hometown newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, looked bad by carrying little of the scandal of Reverend Wright in the news columns until after the speech Tuesday.
Wednesday morning, the front page offered a dispatch from the San Francisco Chronicle headlined: “Speech on racial divide a bold move.” The reader wasn’t even off page 1 before learning that Obama was “confronting America’s racial history head-on.”
In fact, Obama was desperately changing the subject.
Obama backtracked from an earlier comment that had him staying true to Reverend Wright because he had never heard the offensive comments.
That couldn’t fly in the face of 20 years of membership in the church and the video evidence. So the new tack in the speech had to be that, yes, Obama had heard some offensive, even “fierce” remarks and was appalled.
The problem is that these weren’t fierce comments, they were lies.
If Obama found the Reverend Wright’s message so offensive, why didn’t he as a leader of men, out of love and admiration for his friend and “spiritual mentor” set the pastor right?
How is Obama going to deal with the bloodthirsty dictators of Iran, North Korea, or even Fidel Castro’s little brother in Cuba – all of whom he has said he wants to sit down with and engage as our 44th president – when he cannot confront the lies of his own pastor of 20 years? That was the question posed on Fox News Channel by former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Hillary Clinton will go into the convention with momentum from victories in California, New York, Texas, Ohio and probably Pennsylvania.
She might even pull ahead in the popular vote.
But it’s already next to impossible for her to overhaul Obama in the pledged delegate count.
She should mount a white house, or a black horse as you prefer, on behalf of the 23 million black churchgoers who want nothing to do with Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s bigotry and hatred.
Polls can sway the convention, but Clinton needs not just to be beating Obama in September, she needs to be clobbering him.
So this time around, “It’s the polls, stupid!”
March 2008
