Walt Gilbert's blog

Obama's most recent pastor difficulties won't be easy to shake.  There's a longstanding relationship between Obama and Pfleger (who could best be described as the Vanilla Ice of black liberation theology) which features at least one sizeable transfer of taxpayer funds to the benefit of Pfleger's programs at his church, St. Sabina.

One of those long-time supporters was Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically active leader of St. Sabina Church. He gave Obama's campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.

What one has to wonder is just how Pfleger manages to maintain tax exempt status in spite of the fact that he makes absolutely no bones about being politically active, and has in fact expressed a high degree of pride in the fact.  Add to that the fact that his church has benefited from taxpayer funds, secured by Barack Obama as a state senator, after he personally donated money to Obama's political campaigns.

This could be a case where Pfleger is within the letter of the law while being far outside the spirit.  But, if nothing else, the relationship between him and the likely Democratic presidential nominee warrants close examination by the press, if not federal authorities.

UPDATE:  You have to wonder if Pfleger intentionally set out to undemine Obama with his comments on Sunday, especially after reading this passage from the Christian Science Monitor in light of Obama's disassociation Jeremiah Wright following his performance at the National Press Club and NAACP meeting:

The night before he announced his candidacy for president in February, Obama withdrew an invitation to Wright to give the public invocation, a decision that did not sit well with some other Chicago pastors. Pfleger said Obama told him that he didn't want criticism of Wright to detract from the big day. "I told him I thought it was the wrong decision," Pfleger said in an interview.

While perusing the suggestions over at Ironman's blog post on outside-the-box VP choices, one name jumped out at me -- Christopher Ilitch.  I don't know a whole lot about Mr. Ilitch outside of what his bio has to say.  I seem to recall that his family is very much pro-military, and from what I gather, he was a big supporter of Rudy Giuliani in the primaries.

A lot of business experience, young, family-oriented, pro-military, from a battleground state where his family is immensely popular.

He certainly seems worthy of consideration to this particular blogger.

Comments?  Can anyone tell us more about him?

The ever-irascible Andy McCarthy has chimed in over at NRO's The Corner regarding the "one-term pledge" that has been floated by, among others, Ramesh Ponnuru.  In his patented molar-grinding style, McCarthy reminds us once again that he is not a fan of McCain-Feingold (how quickly we forget), that the cap-and-trade scheme to combat global warming will increase taxes (on which I agree, but find it less offensive than anything Obama would do), and asks us why anyone should trust John McCain's pledge to appoint conservative judges in light of the fact that he doesn't particularly worry about making Andy mad.

More accurately, he laments the idea that McCain doesn't mind "infuriating conservatives", which seems a rather broad-brush statement given the fact that I'm a conservative and not in the least bit infuriated by McCain.  But, then, that's typical of McCarthy and far too many others within the conservative fold.  And, if McCarthy cares to know the truth, it's that kind of attitude which created the opening for McCain to land the nomination.

Contrary to what many conservatives would have us believe, the discontent within the Republican Party didn't develop the minute John McCain locked up the number of delegates necessary for the nomination.  There's been all manner of contumely within the ranks for a few years now, going back to the Harriet Miers nomination.  And, unsurprisingly, Andy was at the forefront of that initial skirmish.

I was among those who believed that Miers should get a fair, up-or-down hearing before the Senate and let the chips fall where they may.  I was very obviously in the minority on that issue, and as such, I've come to accept it.  We ended up getting a great nominee in her place.  But, what I simply cannot accept is the way in which Miers was treated by some conservatives who were angered by her nomination. 

Within the first few hours following the president naming her as his nominee, there was a whispering campaign that suggested that, since she was still single at the age of 63, she could very well be a lesbian.  The rumor was pushed in the blogosphere and on bulletin boards, encouraged by conservatives who were "infuriated" that one of their pre-ordained favorites wasn't selected.  So "infuriated" were they that anyone who dared to speak up for her right to be heard out was immediately slandered as a "Bush-Bot", a RINO, a sell-out, and a boot-licker.

Then came the Dubai Ports World deal, which stirred up the same outrage among many of the same conservatives.  And any attempt to defend the idea was met with the same derision.  Never mind that it turned out to be a part of what could have been an excellent source of intelligence in the gulf region.  It rubbed certain tight-knit communities within the conservative movement the wrong way, and if you crossed them, you were howled out of the movement as a traitor who was willing to turn our ports over to Jihadists (a word which stirs McCarthy to white-hot rage these days) and put our nation at risk for touchy-feely PC purposes.  Again, I and a few others came out on the short end of that one. 

And then came Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  Almost immediately after President Bush's re-election in 2004, blogs and bulletin boards began a push for action on the US-Mexican border.  At first, I was among those who called for action to be taken on the border to slow the influx of illegal immigrants.  But, I soon noticed a sharpening of the rhetoric and the increasingly angry tone of border security advocates.  It wasn't long before it occurred to me that there was a concerted effort among grassroots organizations to target places on the internet where conservatives tend to congregate and sound the alarm.  By then, the rhetoric had grown so outrageous that I and many other conservatives felt compelled to push back.

And, in a familiar pattern, those who spoke out against such rhetoric were labeled as traitors, sell-outs, one-worlders, open-borders fanatics, "Bush-Bots" and worse.  Not surprisingly, the "infuriated" conservatives were often conspiracy theorists who with paranoid fantasies about the North American Union, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the Trans-Texas Corridor.  As if that weren't enough, there were even those among the group who claimed that E. coli outbreaks were a product of Mexican illegal immigrants getting fecal matter on lettuce due to a lack of hygeine and that they were responsible for an explosion in the number of cases of leprosy (which never occurred).

So, if some conservatives are "infuriated" about the fact that John McCain managed to get the GOP nomination, they can thank themselves for their fury.  And, they should understand that, by now, those of us who support McCain have grown quite accustomed to that fury.  After all, we've been dealing with it for the past three and a half years.

Perhaps it's time they regroup and give a little thought to changing their tactics.  The Next Right is a good start in that direction.

UPDATE:  As if on cue, I stumbled upon this story at Lucianne.com.

Everybody loves a great political gaffe when it falls right into their lap.  They've often been the deciding factor in elections, which is one reason why Hillary Clinton is justified in staying in the Democratic primary all the way to the convention.  You just never know when Barack Obama might commit one that causes his entire campaign to throw its hands up and start updating resumes. 

Unfortunately for Clinton, as she has found out in recent days with her reference to Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the longer she stays in the race, the greater the likelihood that she'll commit one herself.  It was an embarrassing misstep, to say the least, but it still wasn't enough to end her hopes.  In fact, it seems the only thing that could end her hopes (that is, her own hopes, and not of those of us who dwell in the material plane) would be a six-month stint in a padded cell and a straightjacket.  And even then, there'd have to be cage fighters armed with cattle prods stationed at the cell door.

But, the constant vigil for malapropisms that so many conservative bloggers and opinion makers strikes me as symptomatic of the difficulties that the movement faces going into the fall elections.  For instance, Obama's Gaffe O' The Day wherein he claimed that his "uncle" was involved in the liberation of Auschwitz created a stampede of salivating conservatives scrambling to their keyboards in hopes of being the first blogger to bust his chops on what appeared to be a reincarnation of Hillary's "Lioness of Tuzla" blunder(s).  Sadly, it turned out to be a simple matter of confusion with regard to location and generation rather than an attempt to deception or narrative embellishment.  Still, the first reflex for many conservatives was to seize on it as an outright lie in the hope that it would be the killer gaffe.

Conservatives would be well advised to stop betting on the emergence of a campaign-ender and focus more on Obama's actual weaknesses as a candidate.  Most likely, there won't be any gaffes of sufficient magnitude to render him completely unelectable. 

Still, this wasn't a completely harmless misstatement of fact.  It does feed into the sense that many people have of Obama that, at times, he is historically clueless.  His speech in Selma, Alabama is another example when history failed to support Obama's biography.  One would expect that a man seeking the highest office on the face of the planet would be intimately familiar with the details of Nazi war crimes in a time when anti-Semitism resides at the very core of the dangers we face in our foreign policy via the struggle against Islamic terrorism. 

In fairness, the first thing that came to my mind upon hearing Obama's claim wasn't the fact that it was the Russians who liberated Auschwitz.  But, in the end, what came to my mind doesn't matter, since I'm not asking people to make me the leader of the free world and to cut me a little slack on my lack of foreign policy experience based on my worldliness and brilliance.

The conservative blogosphere and internet bulletin boards are slowly but steadily showing more signs of support for the Republican presidential nominee.  Yet, there remains a core of intransigent grousers who seem to scan the web looking for any item which bears his name as an opportunity to post some derogatory remark which almost invariably contains the word "RINO" (Republican In Name Only, for the uninitiated).

For the most part, these people are nothing more than embittered losers who backed some other candidate in the Republican primary races, flummoxed at the very notion that the entire conservative movement didn't line up behind their man -- Tom Tancredo.  There are a few remaining Romneyites who still harbor the chronic dyspepsia of loss, by and large, they've come to accept the idea that he simply didn't put together a strong enough case with conservatives that he wasn't the same man who ran to Ted Kennedy's left in his run for the veteran senator's seat in 1994.

Then, there's the talk radio set who are still smarting over the fact that they couldn't muster sufficient forces to bring McCain's campaign to a halt in January, despite a month-long series of three-hour attack ads against him.  Of all the sins that McCain has committed against Limbaugh, Levin and Ingraham, the only unforgivable one seems to be winning.  Sooner or later, though, they'll have to face up to the fact that even the most devoted audience can tolerate doom, gloom and lament for only so long before they seek out someone with something constructive to say.

As someone who saw McCain's victory coming in December, and decided at that point that it was time to go ahead and get behind him, I'm somewhat surprised at the number of people we conservatives have looked to for wisdom who failed to recognize it.  But, what's troubling is the fact that so few of them still have yet to accept it.  Rather than come to grips with the fact that the voters chose the man who is best positioned to keep the White House in Republican hands this November, they choose to lament the fact that independents and Democrats (you know, the people whose votes will be needed in order to win the general election) were allowed to participate in the process.

It's hard to say whether these people are more disturbed by the idea that the most doctrinaire conservative in the race didn't win, or the sense that the extent to which they control the Republican Party and influence voters is waning.  But, make no mistake about it; the loss of control is a major factor.  And, the ongoing complaints of establishment conservative figures amounts to an attempt to reassert their influence by sowing discontent among rank and file conservatives.  They figure, "If I can't take the nomination from him, I can at least jawbone him into submission by threatening to keep the GOP base in a constant state of disillusionment."

In doing so, the disgruntled conservative pundit class is doing a grave disservice to the nation.  By focusing on all of the areas in which they've disagreed with Sen. McCain over the years, they seek to obfuscate what is undeniably the single most important issue of this election and every election that follows it for a generation; victory in Iraq.  Despite the fact that opinion polls show other issues to be of greater importance to the electorate -- such as the economy and gas prices -- a de facto surrender or outright loss will have permanent consequences that won't be mitigated by an improving economy or cheaper fuel.

Some have sought to gloss over the possibility that Obama (or Clinton) would seek a premature troop withdrawal out of fear of being saddled with the loss.  They may have a point.  But, then again, they could be very wrong.  Either way, it's a gamble, and there is no way on earth that the conservative movement would survive a bad bet that places America's credibility as a threat to state sponsor's of terror, or the lives of the troops who have already been lost and those that would be lost in the inevitable escalation of attacks that would ensue in the wake of an electoral victory in which the incoming president made surrender an integral part of his campaign.

But, far more important than the political fallout that would come from conservatives' failure to get behind John McCain as the nominee of the Republican Party is the damage that would likely ensue to the nation itself.  The identity crisis that followed our abandonment of Vietnam led America into a period of impotence that we continue to pay for to this day.  Osama bin Laden himself has cited our seeming inability to endure serious hardship and unwillingness to tolerate combat casualties in defense of our interests as a rationale for taking on the US, the world's lone superpower, through asymmetrical warfare.  And it was our limp-wristed response to the atrocities of Mogadishu, Tanzania, Kenya, and the port in Yemen that provided all the encouragement needed for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Is there any doubt that, whether bin Laden remains as the face of international Islamic terrorism, or someone moves in to take his place, a withdrawal of troops from Iraq will provide the impetus for more frequent and more lethal attacks on our interests, both foreign and domestic?  Is there any doubt that a Barack Obama victory in November will be seen by the forces of Muslim extremism as capitulation?

The simple fact of the matter is that conservatives have two choices.  They can choose to stand behind John McCain, who has shown leadership and resolve in the single most important issue facing America for the foreseeable future while working to rebuild a conservative majority from the ground up on other issues that are of undeniable, but subordinate importance to the existence of America as a credible force in the world.  Or, they can choose to stay home, teach the Republican leadership a lesson by withholding their votes and monetary support, allow Barack Obama to win in November and hope that it doesn't cost us a few thousand more lives.  Or a city.  Or worse.

If you're tempted to allow the Democrats to take over all three branches of government in the hope that they'll make such a hash of things that the GOP will benefit in the aftermath, you need to do some serious thinking about what that aftermath might be.  You're also showing a good bit of ideological pusillanimity if you think that the Republican Party -- or conservatism -- can only appeal to voters when contrasted against the hoped-for failures of the alternative.  And, if you're willing to let America suffer whatever may come for the sake of political positioning, you're much worse than any RINO that you despise.  You're barely distinguishable from the terrorists themselves.