Barack Obama And The "R" Word

It isn't "race" or even "Wright" (close enough). It's "radical." On issue after issue, from immediately abandoning Iraq to Al Qaeda to supporting a total ban on handgun ownership, Sen. Barack Obama is on the radical fringe of American politics.

This popped up again when Sen. Obama was confronted on the issue of abortion while campaigning among pro-life Democrats. He gave a weasley, mealy-mouthed answer, and attempting to clean that up led to his dopey "punished with a baby" comment. But as Michael Gerson points out in the Washington Post, Obama's record is clear:

Obama's record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion -- a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called "too close to infanticide." Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" because of a crisis pregnancy -- hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life.

At least 80% of Americans oppose partial-birth abortion. I've never seen a poll number, but I'd assume about 99% of Americans think a doctor should try to keep a baby alive who survives a botched(?) abortion.

In a normal election, issues like these would matter. Nominating a candidate from the fringe of either party is usually a way to lose votes. But once again, Sen. Obama's race is his ally. Sen. Obama is in Dennis Kucinich territory on issues and ideology, and you saw what happened to Dennis.

But Obama supporters dismiss virtually all criticism of their candidate as some form of racism. Sometimes they even apologize, arguing that "you're not TRYING to be racist when you point out Sen. Obama has no experience or accomplishments, but that's what you're doing."

Barack Obama, as a candidate for president, is a disaster. His recent stumbles and his repeated decision to resort to outright lying (McCain's "100 years of war"; NAFTA and Canada; the ILV questionnaire) show that Sen. Obama isn't even a particularly talented politician.

The media have been doing an excellent job ignoring, avoiding or shamelessly covering up Sen. Obama's problems. But in the new media era, the Boston Globe-Democrat and CNN can only do so much.