OBAMA: PISSED OFF, BITTER VOTERS TURN TO GUNS AND GOD

Saturday in Indiana, Sen. Clinton accused Sen. Obama of delegitimizing rural voters who value guns and religion. "I grew up in a church-going family," Sen. Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis. "The people of faith I know don't 'cling to' religion because they're bitter." She later told of how her father taught her to shoot a gun. "Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a constitutional right," she said.
Sunday, Sen. Obama mocked Sen. Clinton, who supported gun-control measures in the 1990s.
"She's packing a six-shooter. Come on," Obama said to roars of approval from the steelworkers. "... I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blind."

Last month, Sen. Obama survived a test when racially divisive remarks from his longtime pastor surfaced, forcing the first viable African-American presidential candidate to give a nuanced and widely praised speech on race relations. Rival campaigns were wary of exploiting the incident for fear of backlash.
Sen. Obama has encountered other problems in trying to connect with rural whites. At a campaign stop in Adel, Iowa, he drew cringes when he asked a crowd of farmers: "Anybody gone into a Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?"

Obviously, there's more to Barack Obama than the eloquent, post-partisan, disciplined purveyor of "hope" that he typically projects. There's also the Barack Obama who attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ("God damn America") church for 20 years, the one who emerged from the Chicago Democratic machine with friends like Tony Rezko, the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, and now we learn the one with a Harvard-eye view of American angst.

Mr. Obama's unreflected condescension is reminiscent of the famous 1993 Washington Post article that described evangelical Christians as "poor, undereducated and easy to command." And the fact that he said it so naturally in front of a San Francisco crowd suggests that this is what he may truly believe. This is Mr. Obama's inner Mike Dukakis.
The Senator went into damage-control mode on the weekend, initially defending his comments as what "everybody knows is true," then later saying he "deeply" regretted if his words "offended" some. He also tried to suggest that he really meant to say that economic anxiety prods people to focus on cultural and social issues at the polls. "So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people....they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community."

Mr. Obama's comments are a gift to Hillary Clinton, who of course pounced on his "demeaning remarks." So far, Senator Obama has had a mostly charmed Presidential run, but the truth is there's much that Americans still don't know about him or what he believes. Let's hope Hillary keeps the heat on the Senator from Illinois, lest we elect another disappointment such as past history has proven.