Bad News: They Are Covering Up His Radical Record. Good News: They Need To.

Hugh Hewitt:

Camouflaging Obama

In his very brief United States Senate career, Barack Obama was at the far left edge of his party. The non-partisan and widely respected National Journal rated him the most liberal member of the United States Senate in 2007.

In his brief state senate career in Illinois, Barack Obama was at the left edge of Illinois politics.

In his primary challenge to Congressman Bobby Rush he did not run as a centrist alternative to Rush, but as a younger, more energetic version of the left-wing Congressman.

His first memoir, Dreams of My Father, has only the sort of left-wing critiques of society and government that one would expect from a "community organizer," and the cases he brought as a young lawyer were the sort that left wing public interest lawyers bring.

In the Democratic primaries, Obama to the left of Clinton, successfully flanking her on the war and the FISA bill which he pledged to filibuster. It was easy for Obama to do because that was his genuine self --a man of the left, uninterested in any of the bipartisan causes championed by the handful of centrist Democrats, such as the Gang of 14 deal.

Obama's the real deal --a genuine radical, who sat comfortably in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years and served alongside of radical Bill Ayers on a board and opened his state senate campaign in the home of Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

So it is quite amusing to see the Washington Post this morning announce in a headline: "Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint," the start of the least artful bit of political camouflage work I have seen in many years.

Only a MSM reporter has troubling pinpointing Obama's ideology. Obama's for sharply raising taxes and for massive increases in spending. He favors immediate retreat in Iraq and wants to parlay without preconditions with Ahmadinejad and Chavez. Obama supports the abortion on demand in every situation, and thinks Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the two most liberal members of the Supreme Court, the model for future SCOTUS appointees. Obama endorsed the D.C. gun ban that was struck down by the Supreme Court and Ibama endorsed the Court's decision conferring habeas rights on the Gitmo detainees. On immigration, Obama worked to undermine the flawed compromise of last year because the amnesty it offered was in his view not far reaching enough. Until this week he opposed the effort to extend the surveillance authority of the U.S..

Obama strongly supports same-sex marriage, and opposes the California amendment to restore the definition of marriage and rebuke the California Supreme Court's usurpation of the people's authority to define such a basic right, in a stroke putting himself on the far left edge of the crucial debates on marriage and the role of the judiciary. On Monday he lectured parents on their need to teach their children Spanish and announced himself embarrassed by the inability of Americans to speak foreign languages, an echo of the anti-American rhetoric employed by Michelle Obama on many occasions during her campaigning for her husband.

Obama bluntly declared rural people bitter, and dependent on guns and God for meaning in their lives, and served notice that we have to stop using our SUVs and generally lower our standard of living because we consume too much energy.

In the space of 24 hours he declared that an undivided Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel and then reversed himself after receiving criticism from Palestinian sympathizers.

In a radical break from past practice and his own promises, Obama has abandoned public financing of presidential elections, and his commitment to debate John McCain anytime and anywhere has been thrown overboard as well as his weakness away from a teleprompter became apparent.

Obama opposes increasing domestic exploration for oil on the outer continental shelf, and wants to "save" social security by dramatically increasing the tax burden on the highest earners without increasing even the illusion of the benefits they would receive.

By any fair measure, Barack Obama is quite obviously the most radical major party presidential candidate in history. Only the Washington Post and other accomplices in the MSM could fail to figure that out because either (1) they are so dazzled by empty rhetoric, or, as is much more likely (2) they wish to assist Obama in the deception that his campaign has become in the last month in order to elect a candidate who would be rendered unelectable if the public was aware of how far outside the mainstream he really was.

It might work, but it is encouraging to know that the left in the Democratic Party and the MSM still thoroughly understands it cannot win elections in America if it advertises what it truly believes fully and openly.