Today in Florida President Barack Obama “backed off” (as Politico’s Carol Lee put it) his defense of the Ground Zero mosque. Obama now claims that last night he was only defending the legal rights of the organizers: “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about. And I think it’s very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.”

Gee, Obama sure sounded last night as if he were defending the mosque. That’s certainly what his fans thought he was doing. Here, for example, is Greg Sargent: “Obama didn’t just stand up for the legal right of the group to build the Islamic center. He voiced powerful support for their moral right to do so as well, casting it as central to American identity. This is a critical point, and it goes to the the essence of why his speech was so commendable.” It also sounded as if Obama were chiding the mosque’s critics for failing to “welcome” people of all faiths in this country (“This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”).