Rev. Wright continues to sink Obama. At the Real Clear Politics blog, Tom Bevan sums up the buzz after Wright’s National Press Club speech: “Jeremiah Wright has managed to do the impossible this political season: unite pundits from the left and the right in agreement about how badly he’s hurting Barack Obama’s quest for the White House.” And bloggers across the spectrum are much the same. Some bloggers question Wright’s motives. Live-blogging the NPC speech, Michelle Malkin asked, “Is he working for the Hillary campaign? Is he angry at Barack Obama? Because he has got to know this is killing his spiritual protege’s campaign.” As John McCormack noted here earlier, Wright doesn’t seem like he’d even support a President Obama: “What will come of Wright if Obama captures the White House? ‘I said to Barack Obama last year, “If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”” The Left agrees; Time‘s Joe Klein says, “Wright’s purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself–the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton–and destroy Barack Obama.” And bloggers agree that Obama must denounce and distance himself from Wright if he wants to save his campaign. Yesterday Obama said that Wright’s views “don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about. But he’s obviously free to make those statements.” But is that denunciation enough? At the Corner, Byron York says, “It’s pretty clear that the most urgent task today for the Obama campaign and its advocates in the media is to cut Obama free from Rev. Wright.” Hugh Hewitt explains, “Unless Senator Obama moves quickly and decisively to completely repudiate Reverend Wright, his fall campaign will be doomed. (And even a complete repudiation of Wright may not save the nomination if Hillary Clinton stays to her own course and begins to talk about Michelle Obama’s vision of America for the rest of the primary season.)” At Contentions, John Podhoretz thinks Obama still has a shot: “If Wright and Ayers had come to dominate the news in October, that would have spelled the end to Obama’s presidential hopes. The fact that they have dominated the news in April will, I suspect, prove to have been something of a lucky break.” But Jennifer Rubin thinks it’s too late and concludes, “Wright is twisting the knife by pointing out that Obama never denounced him and that he merely ‘distanced’ himself (like any good politician). This spells only bad news for Obama.” Whatever happens to Obama, I think we can all agree with Ross Douthat’s characterization of Wright: “a pure creep straight out of an Augusten Burroughs memoir, who’s happy to sabotage a younger, finer man who might just be the first black President of the United States in the hopes of feeding his own ego and becoming…what? The next Al Sharpton? The next Willie Horton? How vile and pathetic.”
