Obama's statement:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.""And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
ABC News: Obama Allies Avoid Trying to Explain Most Controversial Part of His Remarks
HotAir.com: Dems desperately focus on the “bitter”
Quote:
Bitterness, however, wasn’t the objectionable part of the statement. Hillary Clinton chose to chase that particular rabbit around the track, and some of the media followed, although not all. Obama’s camp seized on that and has tried adopting bitterness as its strategy, claiming that small-town voters are right to be bitter about an economic expansion that has created the lowest unemployment we have had in any 25-year period of this nation’s industrial history.But that’s intellectually dishonest. Let’s break this statement into its component insults:
“[T]hey cling to guns…” Cling to guns? Americans have “clung” to guns since the founding of the Republic. It’s such a core value to this nation that its founders placed it second on the Bill of Rights, right after freedom of speech and religion. Speaking of which …
“or [they cling to] religion …” People don’t become religious because the economy hits a few bumps in the road. Obama may have chosen his religion based on politics, but most people follow a religion out of a deeper sense of spirituality. I can’t think of a more condescending and contemptuous analysis of religious dedication than this statement.
“or [they cling to] antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment…” Small-town voters are bigots and xenophobes; there’s no other way to read the first part of this statement. The second part, about them being “anti-immigrant”, is a non-sequitur. They may be anti-illegal immigrant, but that’s a far different issue. Obama offers no proof that small-town voters are xenophobes, but the Frisco audience didn’t demand any, either. It’s part of their own bigotry that makes them see middle America in those terms.
“or [they cling to] anti-trade sentiment …” And this is just jaw-droppingly hypocritical. This comes from the same candidate who opposes the Colombian free-trade agreement and wants to throw NAFTA out the window. Who’s clinging to anti-trade sentiment? Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Big Labor.
It would be difficult to be any more condescending or insulting in so many ways to so many voters in a single sentence. It reveals a deeply elitist and shockingly callow candidate. It’s the “Let them eat cake” of 2008.
HotAir.com: Obama back on the offensive (Video added) [… “'Offensive' being a word with two different meanings, and both are applicable here."]
HotAir.com: Obama tries again: You know, I probably could have said it better
HotAir.com: Obama tries to change the subject: I’m “out of touch?” Update: McCain campaign says No Sale
Newt Gingrich: Obama just doesn’t get Americans
More links after the jump...
See also:
Will Senator Obama Use Iraq To Win The Catholic Vote?
Meditation: Obama And The Punishment Of Unborn Life
Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s Pastor & Mentor, Jeremiah Wright: "Former Muslim"
Heart of Darkness. Barack Obama's Abortion Stance
Clinton And Obama's Dangerous 'Change'
Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007
Obama Has Built A Solid Liberal Record
Political Scientists Say Obama Might Be More Liberal Than Hillary
Obama Speech Obscures Left-Wing Record
For Obama, 'Unity' Is Called 'Liberalism'
Obama More Pro-Choice Than NARAL
Barack Hussein Obama Defends Partial-birth Abortion
Obama Campaign Defends His Abortion-rights Record
Senator Barack Obama: Christianity Has Been “Hijacked” By The “Christian Right”
When you consider the kind of rabidly racist brainwashing Obama received for 20 years from Rev. Wright, then these sorts of statements make perfect sense! Obama sees the world through the same filters of hate, racism and paranoia as Wright does. And so Obama just naturally assumes that since that's the way he thinks, everyone else must think the same way, especially White people (as my university professors taught me, only White people can be racist). A sort of racial-material dialectics makes the world go round for these people. And that makes them VERY scary!
In all of my 40 years, I've never even seen a member of the KKK before--at least one that was open about it. But Democrats are on the verge of actually making this Obama character their nominee for President! And Hillary isn't a whole lot better!
Posted by: jay_d_acre | Monday, April 14, 2008 at 11:04 PM
Anybody who believes that voting for a president produces better results than a monarchy needs to really examine the three main candidates and realize how horribly stupid we all act in big groups.
God help us all.
Posted by: Jeffrey | Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 08:24 PM
Besides Rev. Wright, another (who still appears on Obama's website as an endorser) is Father Pfleger who, during a demonstration against a licensed firearms dealer's business, called upon the crowd to drag the dealer from his business and "snuff out" the dealer. All the efforts to spin these remarks fail to justify a call for homicide in violation of the law of both God and the state. What does this say about Obama? He's got poor judgment having included both Wright and Pfleger on his website as endorsers, though Wright has been deleted but not until after widespread public revelation of his hate mongering.
Posted by: William Garland | Thursday, May 01, 2008 at 08:55 AM