Teflon Candidate Continues to Test Public's
Tolerance for Ghastly Remarks -- Part One of Two

Editor's note. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Let me begin by assuring you that what follows is not some sort of April Fool's joke in obscenely poor taste. Pro-abortion-to-the-hilt Sen. Barack Obama did say what was attributed to him, in all its revealing stupidity and insensitivity. How the public as a whole responds will be another test of whether Obama, the frontrunner for Democratic Party's presidential nomination, really is the Teflon candidate of 2008.

Saturday Obama was rambling away at a town hall meeting in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, when he said the following:

"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include -- which should include abstinence education and teaching the children -- teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include -- it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn't make sense to not give them information."

There are about five hundred things you might say, but let me list just five. None are particularly original, and all reflect to some extent either comments made to me personally or commentary published in the blogosphere.

#1. I don't subscribe to the notion that off-the-cuff statements are necessary true testaments of where someone's heart is at. Sometimes they are simply meaningless gaffes. In this case, however, Obama's remarks are part of a seamless web of callousness demonstrated toward the unborn--and, in this instance, their mothers. He talks about respecting different viewpoints and the like, and, for all I know, maybe locked away somewhere deep, deep down in his heart, he does. But you'd never know it by the substance of Obama's stunningly anti-life remarks, let alone his voting record as a state Senator and United States senator.

#2. Unplanned children as "mistakes" and "punishment"? Obama's Illinois state Senate seat included desperately poor neighborhoods where, I would strongly suspect, a large proportion of the children are born to single mothers. If he were still representing the people of Chicago's Southside, is it likely he'd utter such a foolish, demeaning remark? But maybe I'm being unfair. The verbal gymnastics some supporters have gone through to "prove" that Obama was not talking about abortion may be the kind of blather that over the years has persuaded the junior senator from Illinois he is invincible.

#3. What kind of a man uses his own single-digit-age girls as props to talk about HIV and abortion? That example of doltish behavior aside, doesn't he realize that the "mistake" he proposes to eliminate would be his own grandchild? For all the talk about Obama's fine-tuned "sensitivity," I am constantly amazed by his tin ear. Noteworthy also is his inability to grasp that just because he has been spoiled outrageously, it doesn't mean that people will give him the benefit of the doubt forever no matter how poor his judgment.

#4. As Obama tells us over and over again, words do matter. Why is the child a "punishment"? Even if Obama's thinking is warped on this matter, can't he find some unwelcoming but at least less hostile description? To quote one response I read online, "The more this man speaks, the more he reveals about himself and his beliefs."

#5. It is incredibly revealing--and indicative of a pattern that cannot be missed--that no matter what Obama says or does, no matter how dubious are his patrons and associates, Obama is always the "victim." You are not supposed to ever call him to account lest your motives be impugned.

Sen. Obama said a horrible thing Saturday that gradually came out Sunday and Monday. You can judge for yourself whether what I have said is fair.

Go to http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/348569.aspx and you can see the video.

Part Two