Obama: The Fallout

All sorts of interesting reaction today to Barack Obama's condescending remarks on "bitter" smalltown Americans who are "clinging" to guns and religion.

Ben Smith at Politico (subject link) highlights a different section of the speech, in which Obama reveals he's not only arrogant and patronizing, he's far from being the "post-racial" candidate we once imagined him to be. Obama said: "...in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laughter), then that adds another layer of skepticism."

Great, so he perceives that smalltown Americans are not only mindlessly clinging to guns and God, they're racists, too.

Ed Morrissey takes Obama's comments apart point by point, and Newt Gingrich also weighs in under a post titled "The Real Obama Shows Up in San Francisco."

In "Sen. Obama, Meet Dr. Freud," Danny Huddleston of American Thinker notes, as I did yesterday, that Obama seems to be projecting his own bitterness onto others.

Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters points out the disturbing parallels between Obama's statement on religion and Karl Marx calling religion the "opiate of the masses."

Allahpundit, commenting on Obama's attempt to dig himself out of the hole today, expands on the Marxism theme: "If his original statement boiled down to 'religion is the opiate of the masses,' think of this as adding, 'and what wonderful things opiates are.'

Lisa Schiffren writes at The Corner: "I now feel fully vindicated in my suspicion that Obama's attendance at Wright's church was entirely political and expedient. No one who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — or even moderate respect for other people's religious views — thinks in these terms about why working class people might believe in God. Or believes that a more enlightened government will supplant that."

Politico's Mike Allen lays out 12 reasons Obama will be haunted by his own words.

Mark Steyn comments on how out of touch the Obamas are with ordinary Americans -- something that was recently made clear when Michelle Obama complained about having to spend $10000 a year on her children's "piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth." I have twice as many children as she does, and our "piano and dance and sports" don't come anywhere close to $10000 a year, and if we had a spare $10000 a year lying around I don't think we'd be frittering it away as Mrs. Obama seems to do.

Senator Clinton's got to be loving this...

Sunday Update: Victor Davis Hanson on Obama's Orwellian rewrite of his original words.

Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News: "Turn his screed around and it comes out this way: If the hicks had good jobs, they wouldn't need God or guns... Such a dark view of heartland hearts is not very Christian and suggests Snob-ama really did hear the rants of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright."

Thomas Lifson: "The Party of the Little Guy appears to be caught in what Marxists like to call a contradiction. Their rhetoric is all about compassion and helping, and taking care of the unfortunate. But their political philosophy is anchored in elitism: the notion that the government (and the elites running it) know better than Everyman what is good for him."