How Far Can His Own Supporters Trust "The Redeemer?"

from Voters Still Not Putting Full Faith Behind Mystery Candidate Obama
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

[excerpt]

Obama promised to be the post-racial candidate who would bring us together. But when asked in March 2004 whether he attended regularly the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama boasted: "Yep. Every week. Eleven o'clock service."

The healer Obama further characterized the racist Wright as "certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for." And Obama described the even more venomous Father Michael Pfleger as "a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely."

Obama can dismiss his past associations with Bill Ayers as perfunctory and now irrelevant. But why then did an Obama campaign spokesman say Obama hadn't e-mailed with or spoken by phone to Ayers since January 2005, suggesting more than three years of communications — in a post-9/11 climate — after Ayers said publicly that he had not done enough bombing?

From ACORN To . . .

Obama's campaign shrugged when legal doubts were raised about the sloppy voter registration practices of ACORN — an organization that Obama himself has both helped and praised.

Yet Obama was once a stickler for proper voter documents. In 1996, he had all of his Democratic rivals removed from the ballot in an Illinois state primary election on the basis of sloppy voter petitions.

Many of Obama's surrogates, from congressional leaders like Rep. John Lewis to his running mate, Joe Biden, have suggested that the McCain and Palin candidacies have heightened racial tensions. Do such pre-emptory warnings mean that one cannot worry about Obama's 20-year relationship with Rev. Wright or long association with Father Pfleger?

Read the whole thing at http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=309739934156277