Obama’s Pastor: A Campaign Issue In The Making?

Democratic Senator Barack Obama ought to brace himself: ABC News has a report about his pastor that is sure to spark a campaign battle where some will demand he denounce him — and Republicans will get ready to use some of the inflammatory statements against Obama if he runs.

(Be sure to read TMV coblogger Polimom’s post on this story HERE.)

ABC News’ Brian Ross reports:

Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

But that may not be enough. If the ABC report gains “legs,” and is used politically against him, Obama may be forced to come out with a more formal and forceful distancing himself from his pastor. Because if you read the ABC report, it’s a general election hit piece in the making:

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.

In reality, we aren’t all responsible for what our pastors, rabbis, priests, dentists, plastic surgeons or proctologists say, so we would not feel compelled to move away from them (well, PERHAPS from a proctologist). But in terms of how The Political Game is played, these comments are bound to be used against Obama. If he gets the nomination you can just hear John McCain rattling them off, asking him how he could belong to a church headed by someone like this.

Newsbusters asks:

Let’s imagine that upon vetting, McCain’s pastor is found to have made statements that were the mirror-image of those that Rev. Wright has made. How long would McCain remain a viable candidate?