GOP Strategist: What Obama needs to do about Rev. Wright
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/POLITICS/04/28/wright.transcript/art.wright2.ap.jpg caption="Jeremiah Wright speaks at an NAACP dinner on Sunday night."]
Ed Rollins
Fmr. Huckabee Nat'l Campaign Chairman
In any election, it is difficult for an unknown and undefined candidate. The first rule of any political campaign is always go out and define yourself before your opponent does it for you.
Even though the 2008 race for the Democratic nomination has been long and expensive, the front runner Senator Obama is still unknown by most voters.
He said he was going to be a different kind of leader, a healer. One who brought people together, not divide them up by groups or special interests. And many voters thought and hoped that was going to be true.
Unfortunately, on his way to the nomination, it's not his opponent Hillary Clinton who is defining him, it's his own friend and former spiritual leader, whose language and rhetoric has been hateful and unpatriotic.
The candidate brushed him aside and tried to move on after the first damage, but Rev. Wright likes the big audience and obviously likes the media attention and maybe even the controversy. He is defining Obama in a way that can only lead to devastating results.
If this race becomes one about the repression of Black America and/or the United States' perceived sins against other nations, according to the gospel of Rev Wright, then the junior senator from Illinois becomes an easy target.
Comments like this one from the Rev. Wright:
FULL POST
The rolling Wright controversy: shine a light or blot one out?
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/04/28/art.wright.jpg%5D
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Barclay Palmer
360° Senior Producer
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke again today, this time at the National Press Club. He said recent criticism of him has really been an attack on the black church. He didn’t specify which.
Wright said the theology of the black church is a “theology of liberation; it is a theology of transformation and it is ultimately a theology of reconciliation.”
Despite its long history, he said the black religious tradition is in ways, “invisible to the dominant culture.”
“Being different does not mean one is deficient. It simply means one is different, like snowflakes,” Wright said, echoing comments he made last night to nearly 10,000 at an NAACP dinner in Detroit. Reconciliation means “we embrace our individual, rich histories.”
Thoughtful comments, certainly, despite the flurry over his relationship with Barack Obama.
But they do raise a question or three.
More than 8,000 in Detroit to hear Wright at NAACP banquet
Roland S. Martin
360° Contributor
www.rolandsmartin.com
DETROIT – The Detroit NAACP has already set a world record for having the largest sit-down annual dinner in the world – I believe it was 10,000 – and this year is no different.
According to the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the chapter, more than 8,000 people have bought tickets this year, and suffice to say that the room is packed.
To put it in perspective there are six head tables assigned by color – yellow, black and white, green, red and the blue, which is considered the main table.
The stars are also out in full force, including: Hill Harper; Anthony Anderson; Vivica A. Fox; Morris Chestnut; Judge Greg Mathis; Michigan Gov. Jenniger Granholm; Michigan U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin; Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.
I'm typing on my BlackBerry, but the photo I'll send soon will show you the expansive room.
The room is hot because the guest speaker is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It has been a busy day for him; earlier he preached two worship services at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, pastored by the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III.
Well, I'm sitting one seat over from where he'll be speaking so you'll get a taste of what he had to say. I also have my Flip Video camera so we hope to have video as well!
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