I just happened to be channel-surfing on my TiVo, which was still on Fox News after recording Billo earlier in the evening. I saw a little exchange between Sean Hannity and Republican former V.P. candidate Jack Kemp, talking about distinguishing between Barack Obama's views on race and those expressed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The folks at News Hounds noticed it, and I posted a transcript on my own blog, "The Third Path"; both have embeds of the YouTube video of part of the segment.
In a nutshell, Jack Kemp — who was an NFL quarterback, then a Republican Congressman from upstate New York, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Bob Dole's 1996 running mate — is fed up with Sean Hannity's efforts to tar Barack Obama with the same caricature of Reverend Wright's racially charged rhetoric, which Hannity declares is "the most incendiary anti-American language you would ever hear from the pulpit." [Evidently, Sean Hannity doesn't get out much.] Of course, Hannity misrepresents both the letter and the spirit of Barack Obama's statement about Rev. Wright, but Kemp doesn't focus on that; instead he cuts to the chase: even The Wall Street Journal editorial says it's absurd to think that Barack Obama's views on race are cut from the same cloth as his pastor's. Hannity pressed on, though, bringing up a trip to Libya on which Rev. Wright accompanied Minister Louis Farrakhan, among other things, but Kemp would not hear of it. He said:
I hope that, [if Barack Obama] is defeated, it's on the basis of bad economic policy, raising taxes, waving a white flag to our enemy in the Middle East, and things like that, not what Pastor Wright said. — Jack Kemp, on Fox News Hannity & Colmes, 2008-03-21
Well, you know what? I agree with him there! I happen to hope that Obama wins in a landslide, but I agree that if Obama loses, it should be because of his policies. If Barack Obama, the golden-throated orator, cannot convince the American people that he has the better plan for America, then he does not deserve to be President, and ditto for Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Beyond that, I appreciate the courage of a Republican politician (albeit a retired one) to chastise the Right Wing Noise Machine for what is, at its heart, a profoundly unpatriotic outlook.