Another day, another conservative attack against Barack Obama over his religious influences, specifically Rev. Michael Pfleger, whose sermon a week and a half ago seemed to catalyze Obama’s resignation from his church. This time it’s The Wall Street Journal. Notice how the new Pfleger-based line of attack has migrated from right-wing talk show land (Michael Medved) to the web (Real Clear Politics) to the conservative establishment (WSJ) in just a few days? With the entire conservative movement leading the charge for him, why should McCain worry about dirtying his hands by attacking someone else’s spiritual guides?
From the Wall Street Journal:

There is also the matter of judgment, and the roots of his political character. We were among those inclined at first to downplay his association with the Trinity United Church. But Mr. Obama’s handling of the episode has raised doubts about his candor and convictions. He has by stages moved from denying that his 20-year attendance was an issue at all; to denying he’d heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary remarks; to criticizing certain of those remarks while praising Rev. Wright himself; to repudiating the words and the reverend; and finally this weekend to leaving the church.
Most disingenuously, he said on Saturday that the entire issue caught him by surprise. Yet he was aware enough of the political risk that he kept Rev. Wright off the stage during his announcement speech more than a year ago.
A 2004 Chicago Sun-Times interview with Mr. Obama mentioned three men as his religious guides. One was Rev. Wright. Another was Father Michael Pfleger, the Louis Farrakhan ally whose recent remarks caused Mr. Obama to resign from Trinity, but for whose Chicago church Mr. Obama channeled at least $225,000 in grants as a state senator. Until recently, the priest was connected to the campaign, which flew him to Iowa to host an interfaith forum. Father Pfleger’s testimony for the candidate has since been scrubbed from Mr. Obama’s campaign Web site. A third mentor was Illinois state Senator James Meeks, another Chicago pastor who has generated controversy for mixing pulpit and politics.
The point is not that Mr. Obama now shares the radical views of these men. The concern is that by the Senator’s own admission they have been major moral influences, and their views are starkly at odds with the candidate’s vision as a transracial peacemaker. Their patronage was also useful as Mr. Obama was making his way in Chicago politics. But only now, in the glare of a national campaign, is he distancing himself from them. The question is what in fact Mr. Obama does believe.

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