It seems to me that if the sentiments are mis-attributed to Obama, that's a complete failure of thougth and understanding in the public. As if that would be a big surprise.
Luckily, from the murmerings I can't avoid (as I try to ignore the news in the middle of a "surge" on my thesis), it sounds like Sen. Obama made a pretty compelling speech about race the other day. Hopefully that will convince people to look beyond the assumed surrogate.
If not, I hope people will read and consider what Mike Huckabee has to say about Mr. Wright's comments:
[Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else...
And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
I don't think he's only speaking this way because he is no longer in the race. Whatever my misgivings about him as a Presidential candidate, I have always felt like he calls it the way he sees it, not the way his pollsters do. And I respect that. A lot.
HT: Alex Massie
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