Thoughts in a Haystack

This is from today's Face the Nation segment on President Obama's speech about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque":

Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who was the National Campaign Director for the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 and the national campaign chairman for the Mike Huckabee presidential campaign in 2007, even called Obama's comments "probably the dumbest thing that any president has said or candidate has said since Michael Dukakis said it was okay to burn the flag. And it was very similar."

"This is an emotional issue," Rollins said. "Intellectually the president may be right. But this is an emotional issue. People who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York."

The "Party of Lincoln" no longer even pays lip service to principle. It is only interested in winning partisan battles and is more than willing to live down to the public's fears, to play off them and to reinforce them, rather than to fight those fears and lead the public to a better understanding of the real issues. It is "dumb" to stand up for what is constitutionally and morally right.

Maybe it is "dumb" when your only measure of what is "right" is "what wins elections." Personally, I'd rather have a president who, at least occasionally, stands up for what is right despite its effect on his reelection chances.
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