Obama Backpedals on Ground Zero Mosque

Politico Arena asks today for continued comment on Obama’s Ground Zero mosque “correction.”


My response


Well, well: What a difference a day makes. Yesterday [Saturday] most POLITICO Arena contributors — including law professors, shockingly — were falling over themselves to defend President Obama’s Friday night Ground Zero mosque remarks — on constitutional principle, no less — while a very few of us were cutting through that nonsense.


Meanwhile, the president and the White House were struggling to get the word out that constitutional principle wasn’t really the point at issue here. It was, rather, the “wisdom” of building a mosque so close to Ground Zero. Now that we’re clear about that, perhaps Arena contributors can focus on that issue, not the straw man they erected to skewer the constitutionally benighted they imagined afoot.


But there’s another issue here, too. On Friday night we saw, once again, the real Barack Obama, the Obama who disparages Americans who “cling to guns or religion,” the Obama who rushes to condemn Cambridge policemen who act “stupidly.” No White House spinmeister can take any of that back