Picking a fight with NRLC on a question of fact
I watched Rick Warren’s Saddleback event last night. I thought
it was interesting. I thought John McCain won, an opening shared by
Zack
Exley, a former John Kerry staffer. He called Obama’s
performance “disappointing” and notes that he had been coached on a
number of issues by evangelical leaders but that Obama “kind of
went around in circles”, calling it “a little John Kerryesque”.
By contrast, he describes McCain as:
Wow. McCain is doing really well. He’s so relaxed and natural.
What’s going on? He was supposed to be old and spent and out of
touch. But he’s being so much more engaging than Obama was. I
think… Right?
But, in some circles, the news of the night may be different.
Just minutes after leaving the stage, Obama gives an interview with
CBN’s David Brody. Brody drills down on the
Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which we have discussed here. The
key passage:
Brody: Real quick, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I gotta
tell you that’s the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it’s
just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants,
main — they’re trying to understand it because there was some
literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And
they’re basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your
position on that bill.Obama: Let me clarify this right now.
Brody: Because it’s getting a lot of play.
Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the
truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a
situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I
would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill
that everybody supported – which was to say –that you should
provide assistance to any infant that was born – even if it was as
a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that
was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was
trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade. By the way, we also had
a bill, a law already in place in Illinois that insured life saving
treatment was given to infants.
When a group like the National Right to Life Committee is called
out as liars by the candidate himself, the group responds and the
issue is elevated. Obama has now given editors reason to print
these stories.
By the way, the best details on this issue are, to my knowledge,
in
David Freddoso’s book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely
Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite
Candidate
This will be an interesting fight to watch. If NRLC and Freddoso
are right, Obama just lied on video to the Christian Broadcasting
Network. That’s a story.