The Tea Leaves Suggest that Obama's Wedge Strategy is Costing Obama.

Obama promises not to push gay-marriage during his second term.

Makes sense.

Alienating a large portion of your key demographic in return for a fraction of 1% of the population was never a good idea.

Will Obama's endorsement of gays undercut his support among Blacks?

Christian Science Monitors:

But in these two Southern swing states, some polling and anecdotal evidence is giving rise to Democratic concerns that African-American enthusiasm for President Obama has slipped as a result of stubborn economic despair, deteriorating inner city conditions, a sense among voters that Obama no longer needs the black vote to win, and disagreements over social issues, including the president’s embrace of same-sex marriage. Heightening those concerns is the recognition by campaign strategists and analysts that, to win reelection, Obama likely needs to get close to the 65 percent of black voters who turned out in 2008 to vote in 2012.

Obama's Self-inflicted Wedge Strategy.

Coalition of African-American Pastors speak out against Obama's "catering" to the homosexual community at the expense of the African-American community on the issue of homosexual marriage.

Former Civil Rights marcher equates mayors who don't want Chick-Fill-A in their community to racists who didn't want blacks in their community. There's some very strong criticism of Obama for ignoring the pastors and for endorsing gay marriage in denigration of the feelings of the African-American community.



It's interesting how this seems to be a phenomenon that occurs outside the "establishment," and to that extent looks like the Tea Party phenomenon.

This event will probably be ignored by the media, but it it should be watched to see what effect it has.

Election 2012.

Obama's support among blacks falling:

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.

The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama. Overall, Romney has a 48 percent to 46 percent lead on Obama in the crucial swing state.

Two points: (a) in light of the economy, why not? and (b) Huh????

Actually, might some of this have to do with Obama's announcement of his position on homosexual marriage?

And, if that's not enough:

Obama's Jewish Support Drops 22 Points in New York:

President Obama's support among Jewish voters in the state of New York has dropped 22 percentage points in only a month, according to the results of a just released poll.

The poll, conducted by Siena College, finds that currently President Obama has the support of 51 percent of Jewish voters, while 43 percent are opposed to him. Five percent are undecided. That means, Obama's lead among Jewish voters is at 8 percentage points.

Previously, in Siena's May poll, Obama had the support 62 percent of Jewish New Yorkers, while 32 percent opposed him. That means, last month, Obama's lead among this group of voters was at a strong 30 percentage points.

And so long union members:

Two new and disturbing polls just out suggest that the road to reelection is getting tougher for President Obama.

In the most significant, Gallup found that union member support for the president is weaker than it was on Election Day. While Obama took 67 of the union vote, according to 2008 election night polling by Peter Hart for the AFL-CIO, Gallup discovered that just 58 percent of union members back the president now. Some 35 percent support Mitt Romney, 5 percent more than Sen. John McCain won in 2008.

Gallup said the union vote is a significant block for Obama, though, “their impact on the presidential race will be limited by their size -- just about 12% of employed voters are union members.”

It's still too early to tell how this will hold up, but the Obama team can't view these as positive developments.

Iowa NAACP leader resigns...

...because of NAACP's same-sex marriage policy.

DES MOINES — A prominent leader in the Iowa/Nebraska branch of the NAACP — the country’s oldest civil rights group — announced today that he is resigning as branch president and a national board member in the wake of the national organization’s decision to endorse marriage between people of the same gender.

The Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr. of the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines issued a statement saying he was stepping down from the NAACP national board and as Iowa/Nebraska state conference president “due to the NAACP’s position and support of same-sex marriage.

“I want to thank the NAACP for the privilege to humbly serve in such an organization and thank all those I had the privilege to work with in the states of Iowa, Nebraska and throughout the country,” Ratliff said in the statement. He was unavailable for further comment.

Ratliff has been an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage rights and has spoken at Statehouse rallies seeking an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to undo a controversial, landmark state Supreme Court ruling in April 2009 that gave legal status to civil marriages involving same-gender couples. The proposed constitutional amendment would define marriage in Iowa as only between one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the national board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People voted to support marriage equality.

During a Statehouse rally in March 2011, Ratliff said his support for traditional marriage was biblically based, adding, “This isn’t a private interpretation, a Burger King religion, and by that I mean a ‘have it your way’ religion.”

Obama's wedge strategy works both ways.

Forcing people to decide where there loyalty lies doesn't guarantee that the desired decision will be made.

Life-long Democrat Committee-woman resigns from Democrat party because of conflict with her Catholic faith.

Obama's Wedge Strategy - Black Christian edition.

Like Catholics, the Black community has its own divide between a liberal elite ascendancy and the hoi polloi. Apparently, the ascendancy has decided to enact its own version of the "wedge strategy" by going all in on Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage, thereby putting Black Christians to the question of answering whether they find their primary identity in loyalty to the Black leadership or their Christian identity.

NAACP endorses same-sex marriage in the face of protests by Black pastors:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest African American civil rights group, voted Saturday to support a resolution endorsing same-sex marriage at its board meeting in Miami, Fla.

And:

Long-time civil rights leader the Rev. Bill Owens has organized the Coalition of African American Pastors. The coalition is asking the president to reverse his recent decision to support same-sex marriage and encourages more black ministers to speak out in support of traditional marriage.

About a dozen African-American pastors gathered Thursday in Memphis, Tenn., for a press conference to protest the comparison of same-sex marriage with the civil rights struggles of blacks.

"The group of black clergy and civil rights leaders say it is time to turn the tide against the 'hijacking' of the civil rights movement," said Owens, the coalition's elder statesman and organizer, in an earlier interview with CP. Owens is also a veteran of the civil rights movement who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A 50-year-old can only read about the struggles and protests of the civil rights era, but some of us who are older have the battle scars to prove it. And the rights we fought so hard to acquire did not include same-sex marriage."

A majority of Americans oppose same-sex marriage ...

... according to the New York Times.

This confirms the point I made yesterday; people in favor of civil unions do not favor gay marriage, they oppose it.

James Taranto writes about an unusually less biased NYT poll:

The Times's headline finding was that an overwhelming majority of respondents, 67%, think the president backed same-sex marriage last week "mostly for political reasons," while only 24% think he did it "mostly because he thinks it is right." This column agrees with the 24% more than the 67%, but in any case Obama has managed a neat trick: He has managed to look like a cynical opportunist while taking an unpopular position.

One reason to think this Times poll may be more unbiased than usual is its findings on the substantive question of same-sex marriage:

About 4 in 10, or 38 percent, of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent favor civil unions short of formal marriage. Thirty-three percent oppose any form of legal recognition. When civil unions are eliminated as an option, opposition to same-sex marriage rises to 51 percent, compared with 42 percent support.

That makes the Times/CBS poll an outlier among polls, but puts it in line with the results of actual voting. Every state where same-sex marriage has been on the ballot, it has lost--usually by considerably larger margins, but mostly in socially conservative states. Forty percent support and majority opposition seems in the right ball park.

The Self-Inflicted Wedge Strategy.

Hispanic Catholic group announces opposition to Obama:

A news release from a group calling itself the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL) says "U.S. Hispanics suffered another blow last week when President Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage," while describing itself as the only national Hispanic Catholic lay leadership organization in the country.

Speaking to the May 9 television interview in which the chief executive said “same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Robert Aguirre, CALL president and CEO stated, “I am shocked, but not surprised, that this president has the temerity to attempt to lead this great nation down a path void of morality and Christian values."

CALL's board of directors includes Bishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles CA (a Mexican native and a member of Opus Dei), Bishop William Olmsted of Phoenix AZ, and Bishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia PA.

Aguirre opined that Hispanics have been hit harder than any other group in terms of unemployment - rising from 6.3% to 11%1, overall poverty rate - rising from 20.6% to 26.6%2, during Obama's term in office. He also said that Latino childhood poverty increased from 27.4% to an astounding 36.3%3. "Hispanics are worse off under this
president than any of his predecessors. Must we now have to face yet another attack on what makes up the very heart of our homes – marriage and family?” Aguirre added.

Obama's Self-Inflicted Wedge Strategy.

Black Pastors - who probably don't think that they should "evolve" - come out against Obama, albeit some continue to say they will support Obama notwithstanding the same-sex marriage issue.

Of course, that misses the issue, which is that there shouldn't even be an issue.

Obama's Self-inflicted Wedge Strategy.

White House getting blowback from Gay Marriage announcement.

Barney Frank told the panel on ABC’s This Week that “I don’t think anyone’s vote was changed” when Barack Obama endorsed the legalization of same-sex marriage — but that might be too optimistic an analysis. The New York Times reports that the White House went on a charm offensive with leaders of faith organizations, including and perhaps especially African-American churches where opposition to gay marriage runs high. So far, the charm offensive has had mixed results:

About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.

The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president’s stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election. …

In the end, Mr. Coates, who supports civil marriages for gay men and lesbians, said that most of the pastors, regardless of their views on this issue, agreed to “work aggressively” on behalf of the president’s campaign. But not everyone. “Gay marriage is contrary to their understanding of Scripture,” Mr. Coates said. “There are people who are really wrestling with this.”

This was the danger of going on the record, a danger Obama’s allies on the Left apparently discounted. Obama drove turnout in 2008 in part through the enthusiastic participation of these very same churches. Having now sided with the people who call these black pastors and congregations “bigots,” especially in North Carolina where two-thirds of black voters supported Amendment One, Obama is not at risk of having them flip to Mitt Romney — but he does risk losing that enthusiasm, fundraising, and organization.

It’s not just about the policy itself, either. The churches now wonder whether Obama will back efforts to force churches to perform same-sex marriages, a topic which one religious leader broached with the President during one of the calls:

“Some of the faith communities are going to be afraid that this is an attack against religious liberty,” Mr. Hunter remembered telling the president.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Obama insisted. “That’s not where we’re going, and that’s not what I want.”

Really? The Obama administration’s track record on religious freedom singularly argues otherwise. Most recently, the White House stabbed their allies in health-care reform in the Catholic Church in the back by using the ObamaCare law that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops supported to create a mandate that requires church organizations to pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. Even more to the point, the Obama administration tried to apply the ADA to force a church to rehire a minister they’d terminated, an attempt that got a 9-0 rebuke from the Supreme Court.

The only time this President is solicitous of religious freedom and principles is when he’s trying to cover his own rear end.

It's enough to get you believing Victor Davis Hanson's prediction that Obama would suffer from the attention of the god Nemesis. As Hanson observes: "The Strange Thing About Nemesis is that the deity picks its victims on the basis of irony and arrogance."

Hanson comments on "Obama's Greek Tragedy."

The reality of Barack Obama is that he was an inexperienced community organizer with an undistinguished record as a Senate newcomer. A perfect storm of popular anger at eight years of George Bush, a lackluster John McCain campaign, Obama's landmark candidacy as an African-American, a disingenuous campaign promising centrist and bipartisan governance, and the financial meltdown in 2008 got the relatively untried and unknown Obama elected.

Most mortals in Obama's position would have treaded lightly. They would have kept promises, steered a moderate course and listened more than lectured until they won over the public with concrete achievement.

But headstrong tragic figures do not do that. They neither welcome in critics nor would listen to them if they did. They impute their unforeseen temporary success to their own brilliance -- and expect it to continue forever. So would-be gods set themselves up for a fall far harder than what happens to the rest of us.

That's about where we are now, with our president playing a character right out of Greek tragedy, who, true to form, is railing about the unfairness of it all.

The year started with Obama cynically attempting to split Catholics from their church over a distinctively Catholic moral issue. Five months into the year - the election year - his arrogance has led him to split himself from his base over a traditional moral issue.

Obama's Self-inflicted Wedge Strategy - Chris Matthews tells African-American to "evolve."

Newsbusters reports:

Hardball anchor Chris Matthews, who routinely smears his political opponents as racist, on Monday lectured an African American minister who opposes gay marriage, "I hope you evolve." The host patronizingly added, "I'm just teasing." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] How would he (or MSNBC for that matter) react if a conservative said such a thing to a black leader?

But that's Okay, Matthews told the black pastor, "I'm just teasing."