Conservativa

Hillary got Obama. She got him. He was Mr. Transcends-Old-Politics. Now he has spent a week defending, explaining, explaining away, dodging, weaving, but most of all having to explain his spiritual, intellectual, and historical relationship with Pastor Wright. He has done really well, considering. (His speech today will thrill some people, and I appreciate that it seems very sincere, though on closer examination there’s a lot of the same-ol’ same-ol’ liberal thought in it). But Hillary knows that huge numbers of people are viscerally offended by some of what Wright has said, and cannot give Obama a pass on it, because Obama has chosen to go to that church for many years, presumably taking his children with him, to listen to that… for years and years.

Looking at the politics, I must say that Hillary has played this really well. No one at the moment is quizzing her on tough issues. No one is asking Obama about how he would handle the Middle East, or the dollar, or anything else. She has made his campaign about “is he too… something… to be acceptable to middle America” and she has done it by using his 20-year history of behavior (attending the church with that pastor). She doesn’t need to do a thing - no snarky surrogates, no boring press release parade - just let the tapes air. The subtext - you may not like her, but she is a known quantity, unlike this possibly too… something… person, Obama. Somewhere Hillary is smiling.

Linkage: Roger L. Simon not happy. Be sure to scroll down through the comments to find the one by Bill Whittle. Allahpundit steamed.