The Conservative Soldier

The mainstream media this morning reminds me of a room full of Howard Deans, unleashing a collective primal scream, in perfect disharmony.

What we were saying here 48 hours ago, the drive-by media (as Rush Limbaugh so aptly tags it) is only now discovering, which is that one Wright represents a lot of wrongs and a world of trouble for the formerly presumptive Democrat Presidential choice, Sen. Barack H. Obama (D-IL).

Obama is no longer actually running for President. He is running from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former and, now permanently exiled, pastor/friend/mentor.

Obama’s past association with Wright was all but a “third rail” topic only a few weeks ago. Many in the media, and fellow liberal consumers of said media, seemed to agree that questioning Obama’s fitness to be President based on his membership in Wright’s Chicago church was unfair, not relevant, a race-card play.

Wright’s words, they said, were not in context. The hateful sermon passages unearthed by Fox’s Sean Hannity were atypical of Wright and not a reflection of the mindset of the congregation.

Eventually, we all might have believed this conventional wisdom had it not been for Wright’s inability to keep his mouth shut, to shun a chance to fuel his emerging celebrity status. Obama nearly wiggled out of Wright’s clutches and was just on the verge of turning his campaign back into a conversation with America about health care, the economy, the war on terror and energy dependence/fuel prices.

Instead, Wright backed Obama to the edge on Monday with his arrogant, divisive remarks before the National Press Club’s assembled guests. We said it then and there: Wright may be Obama’s former pastor but he is in no way his former problem.

It was obvious that Wright was mad as hell that Obama tried to minimize his relationship to Wright. And it was obvious that Wright’s extremist views, his contempt for America, for white people and the media, was not born of recent shifts in doctrine but has been the core of Wright’s identity for years — for the 20 years of Obama’s on-and-off attendance in his church.

Suddenly, after another Obama denunciation press conference, after another “I was against it after I was for it” moment in American politics, the mainstreamers are waking up. Guess Obama should have called out Wright a long time ago. Guess it was a miscalculation to dismiss the cantankerous old pastor as a “crazy uncle” in the family but nothing more. Guess we know more about Obama’s inclinations when he is about to take a political IED on the side of the road leading to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (He will not just distance, he will disown).

The Chicago Sun-Times this morning on its front page promoted reaction to Obama’s bail-out by not one or two, but six, columnists inside the paper. Most of them took up the theme, “Hey, Barack, what took you so long?” For some of these paid pundits, the light just went on, I suppose. For a lot of voters in a general election, character matters and character is reflected by the company one keeps.

Obama’s emergency press conference is another reflection. It is patently disingenuous of Obama to “unequivocally” denounce his ex-pastor after, and only after, Wright re-stirred the pot.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are campaigning for the Presidency, too, lest we forget. They are talking about their plans to right (without the “W” and post-W) the U.S. economy. McCain is doing a town hall on health care today. While they campaign, Obama, you get the feeling, waits for the next shoe to drop, or, in the case of Obama’s ties to professed domestic terrorist William Ayers, the next shoe-bomb.

The clearest gauge of how severe the Wright setback is and will be is found on the home page of the Real Clear Politics web site today. Its digest of Wednesday media reports from newspapers, magazines and blogs, lists six stories about Obama-Wright (the top six), plus one on Ayers, along with a few about the economy and one about McCain.

Wright has to be loving this.

Barack Obama’s pastor has come home to roost.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now retired as head of the church Obama “attends” in Chicago, may be, in fact, Obama’s former pastor, as the Presidential candidate characterizes him. But Wright certainly is not Obama’s former problem. Not by a long shot.

Run, Barack, run. From Rev. Wright. He says he’ll come after you if you are elected President because you will then be the leader of a nation whose foreign policy Wright detests.

But it does not appear the Rev. will wait until Inauguration Day. He appears to be coming after Sen. Obama in the here and now. Wright’s arrogant appearance Monday at the National Press Club in Washington — on the eve of a key Democrat primary in Indiana — can not be misinterpreted. He denies interest in the political process, but make no mistake about it, Rev. Wright is exacting his revenge on Obama.

Obama distanced himself from Wright after revelations of Wright’s past ranting from the pulpit. Obama denounced the anti-American, inflammatory passages from various Wright sermons. Obama claimed he did not often hear Wright when Wright was going off on subjects such as AIDS and America’s racist tendencies.

So now it is time for Obama to pay the price. The Rev. says he is raising his public profile to protect the dignity of his church, and the so-called Black Church community. Yet it is obvious this is only about Wright getting back at Obama, getting back at the mainstream media and about the care and feeding of Wright’s massive ego. He is not attempting to soften his messages of contempt toward the United States and its policies. At the National Press Club, Wright actually sought to advance and sharpen those messages.

First, Wright granted a sit-down with ultraliberal commentator Bill Moyers to take a few swings at Moyers’ softballs. Then he spoke before the NAACP in Detroit, pounding the podium, or was it Obama’s political future he was smacking down? Why would Wright include a rant in his Detroit speech in which he called the candidate “Barack Hussein Obama”? Not once, but several times in rapid succession. The Obama camp abhors the use of Obama’s middle name.

Then it was off to D.C. for a contentious Q&A at the National Press Club. Why now? Why not?

Obama must pay. If Obama falls, Wright rises. Wright will not see Obama in the Oval Office after Inauguration Day 2009 because Obama will be back home in Illinois, regrouping as a defeated man must do. And Wright wants it that way.

The Rev. is so completely delusional he would rather turn up America’s racial tension a few notches, he would rather reassert the power of the Black Church and its doctrine, and he would rather become a rising celebrity. He’d rather have all of that than see Barack Obama become America’s first black President.

The Rev. Wright has come home to roost. But voters on the fence may soon be leaving their perches to re-examine Hillary Clinton or John McCain, and leaving Obama with plenty of time to shop for a new house of worship.

I almost feel sorry for William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. They are angry guys who are sick and tired of the American media’s persistent questions about their words and deeds, and fed up with Democrat voters for their refusal to jump squarely on one bandwagon heading into this year’s general election. (You can’t really jump onto a moving target when weighed down by bitterness, firearms and Bibles).

Why, if Clinton and Obama were only fortunate enough to be political rock stars in Russia, like polished counterpart Vladimir Putin, they’d have an easier time dealing with pesky individuals walking around with intrusive audio and video equipment, creating trouble and bursting their invincibility bubbles.

The soon-to-be-former-President (and Prime Minister-in-waiting) of Russia does not have to put up with the whims of the media, apparently. When the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent recently reported that Putin was dumping his wife for a diminutive trophy babe, a 24-year-old Olympic champion gymnast no less, Putin shut down the newspaper within days of the scandalous revelation. Take that, you unyielding journalistic insects.

Poor old Bill and Barack have no such recourse, but they’re no doubt taking mental notes on Putin’s swift, retaliatory response. If the media continues to turn up the heat here in First Amendment Land, maybe one of Barack’s old Chicago operatives has a friend who has a friend who knows the publisher at Tribune Co., or maybe the Clintons could call in a favor to a Saudi sheik Bill has formerly partied with and ask His Sultanship to make a hostile takeover bid for News Corporation’s Fox News Channel.

Otherwise, they’re out there 24/7 without a net. We know Obama was caught on tape in San Francisco, complaining about annoying working class Americans who are so tormented by their lives that they have no choice but to cling to worship and gun ownership. But that apparently did not leave him suitably leery of the media’s audio equipment.

This week in Scranton, Pa., Obama made a morning appearance at a diner, seated at a counter, suffocated, no doubt, by the bitterness all around him. In an apparent lapse by Obama’s campaign staff, reporters and camera crews were permitted to cozy up as Obama was about to hunker down with a syrup-covered waffle.

What, someone asked, is Obama’s view of President Jimmy Carter’s recent meeting with leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas?

“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Obama sneered, suggesting a hint of bitterness about the prospect of a cold meal.

The reporter, fearless that her media outlet would be shut down because she insisted on doing her job, phrased the Hamas question again and pressed for an answer. “Just let me eat my waffle,” Obama bristled.

Clinton’s media trouble came when chatting with a radio station by telephone Monday night, trying to bolster his wife Hillary’s Presidential campaign. The inquisitor dared to ask the former President if he regretted comparing Obama’s earlier primary win in South Carolina to a 1988 South Carolina primary victory by longshot black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. Clinton rambled on about how the uproar was actually Obama’s camp using the “race card” on him.

Then he hung up. Or so he thought. The interview was over, but Clinton kept talking with audio rolling at the radio station in Delaware.

“I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?” Clinton whined, the line still live.

At least President Clinton has evolved beyond, “Just let Monica and I eat our double cheeseburgers!”

So let us crystalize the words of these campaign weary men. Sen. Obama declined to criticize, or even comment on, the indefensible and reckless behavior of a former President (Carter) and fellow liberal even as Carter seeks to connect with the agenda of Hamas and to better understand its blood thirsty, terror bent organizers.

Obama has given new meaning to waffling. And it is not a trivial re-definition as his silence on Carter is making me nervous that Obama thinks Jimmah is doing the patriotic thing.

Clinton has reminded us that he actually believes he formerly reigned as “the first black president”. All these years later he doesn’t understand that no one was buying it. He has an office in Harlem, but his brain resides on Mars, or beyond.

Meanwhile, the Clinton and Obama media strategists are probably adopting a new approach when faced with a media firestorm: “What would Vladimir Putin do?”