redblueamerica.com

 Obama learned Tuesday that he can no longer wave his fingers, say "this is not the issue you're looking for," and move along. The Force is no longer with him. The electorate is like, well, Jabba the Hutt, laughing uproariously about how that "old Jedi mind trick" won't work on him.

The Jedi mind trick won't work because of the various contradictions in the way Obama has handled his pastor disaster.

1. Obama cannot plausibly say in March that he can no more disown Jeremiah Wright than he can the entire black community — and even his own grandmother — yet disown him now. The question arises: Is his grandmother now due an apology?

2. Obama cannot plausibly say that in 20 years of attending Wright's church that he never heard such radical, racist, anti-American ranting. The question arises: Are we to believe that Wright kept these poisonous views secret for decades — despite having a mighty pulpit and rapt audience that heartily applauds his every word — until just this week?

3. Obama, in his first stab at dousing this fire, put out this story: I've known Wright for 20 years — and I admired him much that I named his second biography after the title of one of his sermons, "The Audacity of Hope." He is a "theological scholar," etc. The implication was that those critics who were disturbed by the notion of Obama calling this racist crank his "spiritual mentor" were not making an informed decision. They were going off half-cocked based on "snippets" and "sound bytes" played ad naseum on the news and YouTube. The question arises: Are you now going to apologize for insulting those critics, since you now agree with them?

And, really, that last point raises the most important question of all: What does it say about Obama's judgment — upon which he has emphasized to compensate for his light public record — was trumped by people who saw Wright for what he was straight off?

Obama turned what should have been a minor flap into a referendum on his fitness for office. He did it — by having the audacity to think that Jedi mind tricks would carry him to the White House. Trouble is, he learned too late that Wright was the droid we were looking for all along.