Friday, July 11, 2008

Can you believe Obama?

We know that many voters on the left can only vote for Senator BarackObama if they’re sure he’s lying. See, for example, Some Obama supporters hope he's lying. (July 9, 2008)

Now what about the rest of us who are unnerved by the idea Obama is lying to us?

Roll Call’s Mort Kondracke today takes up the question: “Obama's Changes Raise Issue: Can You Believe in Him?”

Kondracke excerpts follow in italics, with my comments interspersed in plain.

Maybe the biggest question of the 2008 presidential campaign is "Who is Sen. Barack Obama really?" Of late, the mystery is deepening. …

He has eloquently promised "change we can believe in," but lately he's changing his tune on so many issues it's becoming a legitimate question: Can voters really believe in him?

In a year when Democrats have everything going for them, I think the primary reason Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) is trailing Obama by only 2 points in the Gallup Poll is that voters still have their doubts about Obama.

Some of the doubts are ridiculous or even pernicious -- such as whether Obama is a patriotic American, a Christian, a person who "shares your values."
(emphasis added)

I don’t think it’s “ridiculous or even pernicious” to consider whether Obama shares my values when the matters has to do with his sitting in Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years listening to racist and ant-American sermons and claimed Wright as an inspiring mentor and close friend, only disowning him when Wright told the public Obama was just another politician.

There are also the matters of Obama and his wife providing generous financial support to Wright’s church and bringing their two young daughters there for religious instruction.

I don’t see how Obama could’ve had a 20 year admiring, supportive relationship with Wright and still share some of my most important values which have to do with extreme disregard for racists and anti-Americans and those who support them.

He brought some of this on himself -- by saying that wearing an American flag lapel pin constituted "false patriotism" and by remaining for 20 years in the racially incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church.

The on/off/on again pin matter is telling, but not major with me. Wright as close friend and mentor for 20 years is both telling and major.

Something else: While Obama has flip-flopped on many important matters, including his assertion he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community, on the extremely important matter of explaining how he could've remained a member of Wright's church for 20 years, Obama HAS NOT FLIP-FLOPPED.

He’s been very consistent in telling us he heard none of what his fawning MSM flacks call Wright’s “controversial statements” nor did he hear any discussion of them by others in the congregation.

Both those claims are unbelievable in the original and primary meaning of the word.

Some of the rest of it -- such as that Barack Hussein Obama is really a Muslim -- is being spread on the Internet by haters.

I agree with Kondracke about that.

Kondracke’s entire column is here. It’s well worth a read if only for his ending:

It would convince me that he was a daring man of character if he went to Iraq, saw Gen. David Petraeus and the situation on the ground and came back saying: "This war was wrong at the start, but now we have to win it -- and we can win it, politically and militarily. We will withdraw -- but only under conditions of success."

Such a statement would finally show that he can buck the dominant attitude of the Democratic Party. If he added that he was wrong to oppose Bush's 2007 troop surge, so much the better.

Pending such an unlikely event, the question is open: Is this guy the real deal, or an eloquent phony?

A flip-flopper, a cynic, just an ordinary pol with a gift of the gab -- or a genuine center-liberal capable of tacking while steering a determined course?
There's time to find out before November, but the media have to help with intense, ongoing scrutiny and lots of tough questions.


Do any of you think news organizations will provide “intense, ongoing scrutiny and lots of tough questions” concerning Obama’s background and his positions on the critical issues?

I don’t.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John -

So St. Barack's supporters hope he's lying? Wow! What a reason to vote for him. They might get change and they might not, but who knows? That would seem to depend on the week in which one listens to him. Then, of course, there is his denial that he has changed. Either he's a fool or he thinks we're the fools. Either way you go, he does not appear to be presidential material.

One other thing John. I would emphasize his association with Dohrn and Ayers as well as with ACORN more than with Wright. Wright could have been OK when St. Barack started being associated with him and only afterwards moved into the wackier realms of sermonizing. On the other had, St. Barack's association with Dohrn and Ayers was a conscious decision that he made when it had been well-known that they were domestic terrorists, and correspondingly with ACORN which was well-known to be vehemently anti-capitalist. For me, those associations are far more damming than his association with Wright.

Jack in Silver Spring

Anonymous said...

Mort said about Obama:
And, finally, there's Iraq. It's been a bedrock principle of his campaign that he would pull all U.S. combat troops out within 16 months of taking office. Last week, in one press conference, he said he might "refine" that schedule.

and later Mort said:
It would convince me that he [Obama] was a daring man of character if he went to Iraq, saw Gen. David Petraeus and the situation on the ground and came back saying: "This war was wrong at the start, but now we have to win it -- and we can win it, politically and militarily. We will withdraw -- but only under conditions of success."

Good grief, if Mort hasn't got the message that the Iraqis want us to declare victory and get the hell out of their country ASAP, on a firm timetable, then he hasn't been paying attention. They are ready to throw the US and our friends out. Mort doesn't seem to give us a glimmer that he is aware of what is actually going on in Iraq.

Mort wants Obama and the rest of us, I suppose, to demonstrate character by believing a war on terror, a war without an identifiable enemy, a war that is bankrupting our country, can be won politically and militarily? I can't decide if this piece was put up here to degrade Mort or Obama or both. Are there people who believe a war on terror can actually be won? Forget about Obama, can you believe Mort?

A war on terror is a war on a TACTIC. How can anyone possibly have a war on a TACTIC?