Jeremiah Wright IS NOT A Conservative

I just heard the fourth Obama/Wright defender on the news since Obama’s speech associate Jeremiah Wright with conservatives. Obama performed a similar rhetorical sleight of hand:

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons.

It’s a truism on the left that the right is racist, but evidently the new corollary to that is to be racist is to be conservative. Since when is “It’s all Whitey’s fault” a conservative value? For frequent notions of self-help of a conservative nature, just listen to Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint.

Every time a Democrat gets into trouble, it seems the media’s method of bailing him out is to associate his offense with conservatives. When a Democratic politician does something wrong, the pattern is to 1) not note his party at all and then 2) incorrectly identify him as a Republican. Obama’s in trouble for hanging out with a racist? Well, that racist is actually fairly conservative. I guess that makes Obama a centrist for hanging out with him. Heads he wins, tails we lose.

Allahpundit notes the irony:

Here’s my favorite line. After likening black grievances over racism to white grievances over the economy, which is the Messiah’s magical, transubstantiative way of turning a racial scandal into class warfare, Jesus finally makes a cameo. Does a man who swallowed hateful bilge for two decades out of political convenience really have the balls to lecture other people on the Golden Rule? Oh yes:

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

Unless, of course, your brother or sister designed the AIDS virus at the U.S. government’s behest.

Does Cobb have a point that the bigger picture here is “black liberation theology” and that the way (and the Anchoress expressed this as well) to beat Obama is Rezko, not Wright. I certainly agree. Beyond that, I’d really like to see Obama beat on the merits alone – that his politics are uncomfortably close to socialism and that his rhetoric is both demagogic and deceptive. The fact that he’s corrupt is just icing on that cake, baby. That he’s been associating with a racist conspiracy-monger for twenty years just lit the candles, and it’s John McCain’s birthday.

As to “black liberation theology” I think no more highly of that than I do the “social gospel.” My faith does inform my politics as it does every other area of my life, but when the reverse is true, it’s no longer the gospel, it’s heresy.

Added: Ace’s reaction is an icy blast of common sense:

Obama, and his liberal media spirit squad, speak of having an “open, honest” dialog on race and racial resentments, hatreds, and paranoias. But Obama has had twenty years to have an open dialog — but a private one, which is far easier — with his “friend” Rev. Wright.

Did he have this dialog? He says he disagrees strongly with some of Wright’s “controversial political positions.” Did he, you know, actually raise these points with Wright?

If he did, his putative skills at “reconciliation” and “healing” seem woefully deficient. This bastard has gone on spreading his noxious racism and hatred of America until his retirement… and then beyond a bit. Obama’s going to heal the racial “wounds” of 300 million but he can’t get through to his very good “friend”? He can’t even get him to tone down his hateful rhetoric, even if he continues to give hatred a safe harbor in his heart?

Like Huckabee, he wants to have it both ways.