Checking In With The Other Side

(Political Animal)  CHECKING IN WITH THE OTHER SIDE....I thing we can safely assume that Barack Obama's supporters will all swoon over his speech today. And why not? It was, as usual for him, a helluva good address: intelligent, sane, sympathetic, and broadly appealing. He didn't, however, sound to me like he was really very eager to keep this conversation about race going — a feeling that's easy to understand if you take a look at what's burbling through the conservative id right about now. Ladies and gentlemen, The Corner:

"Amazingly bloodless and dull; part moral hectoring part awkward defensiveness." "I think if you want to be romanced by your candidate, he romanced you. And if you're a guilty white person, you're with Obama because he said so." "Was it just me, or did anyone else note that for the first half of the speech, Sen. Obama seemed annoyed, put out by having to give the speech in the first place?"

"This a breathtaking attempt to pass off Wright's hateful rants by implying that they are little different than the 'political views' of some priest with which a parishioner might disagree." "Obama is no longer a post-racial candidate....today, he has embraced the politics of grievance." "Blame whitey, and raise high the red flag of socialism. This is a serious candidate for the Presidency? Toast, toast."

"His grandmother — his surrogate mother at that point — rejected the black man he was becoming. The anger Obama heard in Rev. Wright's church may not have felt so alien after all." "Any hopes anyone had that Barack Obama would be a gift to civil rights in America — that he would shake hands with Ward Connerly and really be a change died today, I think."

"Does he think OJ was guilty? Hmmm. Probably not the best example to put into play." "It's hard to imagine how someone who listened to this speech, and who had followed at all the controversy of the last few days, could still view Obama as somehow transcending politics."

See? Barack Obama's just another race hustler. I suspect that the "official" conservative reaction in columns and op-eds will be more restrained, but the longer that race stays front and center in the campaign, the more time the real conservative id will have to ooze into the forefront. Obama can't be looking forward to that.