The Reverend Wright Issue
At the Wall Street Journal, Laura Meckler writes that the McCain campaign is getting ready to open a can of Reverend Jeremiah Wright: ‘Attack by Association’ Viewed as Fair Game by McCain Camp.
Don’t be shocked if you see the McCain campaign pull the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of mothballs in new attacks against one-time parishioner, Barack Obama.
McCain advisers say that they see “attack by association” as fair game now, arguing that Obama’s campaign has been using that technique to go after McCain. In particular, the Obama campaign has hammered McCain on the stump and in TV ads on the number of one-time lobbyists working for his campaign. (The McCain campaign is also angry about a Spanish-language TV ad that ties McCain to Rush Limbaugh on immigration, without ever saying that McCain took on Limbaugh and others to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.)
“They played it one way, we played it another way,” said one of McCain’s top advisers, Mark Salter. “Now we’re both going to play it the same way.”
If you’re not a fan of Obama, you’re probably thinking, “It’s about time.” It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Obama’s fans will shriek, “Guilt by association!” and claim that Obama’s relationship with Wright was nothing special.
But they’re going to have to explain this speech by Obama from June 5, 2007 at Hampton University, lavishing praise on Rev. Wright in a way that makes it very clear that Obama was a close personal friend.
This close friend of Barack Obama also joined Louis Farrakhan on a trip to Libya and met with Muammar Gaddafi in 1984, right around the time Obama would have first met Rev. Wright. Has anyone ever asked Obama for his opinion about that trip?
