Nice try Frank, but you'll have to do better

It would seem that support for Obama is melting away faster than the ice underneath a polar bear's feet. Michael Barone has the details:

Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs. On the positive side, superdelegates still are breaking his way. Rep. Baron Hill, whose southern Indiana district almost certainly will vote for Hillary Clinton, came out for Obama. So did fellow Hoosier Joe Andrew, who previously endorsed Clinton and who was named Democratic national chairman by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. (James Carville may have another name for him.) Obama is still well ahead among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, and he is not very far behind in superdelegates, either.

But what about the voters? Here there are some ominous signs. The latest Fox News poll, conducted after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club, showed Obama's favorable/unfavorables at 63 to 27 percent among Democrats, compared to Hillary Clinton's 73 to 22 percent. Suddenly she's not the only one with high negatives. And 36 percent of Democrats say they would be disinclined to vote for Obama because of his longtime relationship with his former pastor. There's more bad news in The Pew Research Center poll of Democrats. Obama's national lead among Democrats is down from 49 to 39 percent to a statistically insignificant 47 to 45 percent.

These results are not outliers. The Rasmussen tracking poll showed Obama leading Clinton 49 to 41 percent before Wright spoke to the National Press Club. Afterward the numbers were 46 to 44 percent in favor of Clinton. The Gallup Poll had Obama leading Clinton 50 to 41 percent the night before the Pennsylvania primary. The results reported May 1 were Clinton 49 percent, Obama 45 percent.

Obama's standing as a general election candidate also seems to have taken a hit. Gallup showed him tied with John McCain 45 to 45 percent before the Wright appearance and trailing 47 to 43 percent afterward; at the same time, it shows Hillary Clinton tied with McCain 46 to 46 percent. Similarly, Rasmussen has McCain now ahead of Obama 46 to 43 percent and McCain tied with Clinton 44 to 44 percent.

The mainstream media has gone into the tank for Obama and is not going to take this lying down. The first salvo in the battle to save Obama has been fired by Frank Rich:

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives’ favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.”

Mr. Hagee didn’t make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America’s most widely heard radio programs, “Fresh Air” on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as “nonsense” and the preacher retract it.

Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.

You can see that the campaign to save Obama is going to be based on one of the Democrat's favorite rhetorical devices, EVERYBODY DOES IT.

The left's response to Bill Clinton's affair with Monica was "what normal man hasn't been sucked off in his office by a girl almost the same age as his daughter while his wife was in another part of the building". So we are now going to hear that John McCain's acceptance of an endorsment from John Hagee is EXACTLY THE SAME as Barack Obama's membership in Jeremiah Wright's church for over 20 years.

Notice how the fact that McCain has never attended Hagee's church or listened to any of his sermons is called a "thin case". I'm sure that Mr. Rich will also consider it "thin" to point out that while Rev. Hagee is well known within the Evangelical movement he is virtually unknown outside of that segment of Christianity.

Let me try to make this plain for the simple minded. Barack Obama was a member of Jeremiah Wright's church for over 20 years and Mr. Obama was a willing and knowing participant in the militant black church experience. He even borrowed the title of one of Wright's sermons, The Audacity of Hope, for one of his books. Remember that in this sermon Wright thundered about the "world in need being driven by white folks greed", a line which Obama quoted in his book.

Barack Obama has absolutely no excuse for not knowing what Wright and his church were all about. A large measure of the reason for Obama's drop in the polls is because of the unbelievability of his claims that he was clueless about Wright's message. It is simply not credible that he could have participated in the Church's ministry for decades and not know exactly what was going on there.

On the other hand McCain has never been a member of Hagee's church and his past contact with Evangelical Christianity was only to call its most respected leaders "agents of intolerance". McCain's new found efforts to win the support of Evangelicals is one of the most transparent panders in the history of American politics. McCain is entirely believable when he says that he had no idea what Hagee believed about the Roman Church.

I would also be willing to bet you large sums of money that neither McCain nor Frank Rich knows that pastor Hagee's views on the Roman Catholic Church are entirely in line with the opinions of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox and the other men who led the Reformation and are the founders of the Protestant Chruch.

I'm sure that Frank Rich, who lives in New York City were everyone who isn't Jewish is Catholic, thinks he has hit a home run by linking, however tenuously, McCain with a preacher who holds the same view of the Catholic Church as martyers who were burned alive (by the Catholic Chruch) for the "crime" of translating the Bible into the common language of their countrymen. However among conservatives, especially in the South, where McCain desperately needs to shore up his support (notice that even with all her well known negatives Hillary still ties McCain in the national polls) this is probably only going to aid McCain.

That is as long as he doesn't do to Hagee what he did to Bill Cunningham.