Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left

Andrew McCarthy, at the National Review, reiterates a point I've been making for weeks: Barack Obama's got a nasty circle of friends, people drawn from the ranks of the extreme, America-bashing political left.

Awareness of Obama's circle of friends is becoming more widespread as the Illinois Senator continues to come under close scrutiny, particularly in light this weekend's "Bittergate" controversy.

Here's McCarthy:

Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies? Maybe it’s because they’re so comfortable around him.

He presents as the transcendent agent of “change.” Sounds platitudinous, but it’s really quite strategically vaporous. Sen. Obama is loath to get into the details of how we should change, and, as the media’s Chosen One, he hasn’t had to.

But he’s not, as some hopefully dismiss him, a charismatic lightweight with a gift for sparkling the same old vapid cant. Judging from the company he chooses to keep, Obama’s change would radically alter this country. He eschews detail because most Americans don’t believe we’re a racist, heartless, imperialist cesspool of exploitation. The details would be disqualifying.

McCarthy goes on to enumerate the specifics of Obama's associational disqualifications: A wife who's stated that she can't be proud of America; a church pastor who's an unapologetic racist and hard-left America-bashing black liberationist; Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who are domestic terrorists (not "terrorist sympathizers," but genuine terrorists with long, unreconstructed associations with violent 1960s radicalism); and Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and notorious supporter of attacks against Israel.

I would add, too, that notwithstanding some flare-ups and concerns among hard-left activists about Obama's fidelity to the movement, the Illinois Senator's the candidate of choice among some of the most implacable antiwar and progressive organizations on the American scene, many of whom have nebulous ties to the neo-Stalinist "peace" coalition.

So, while the media's been content to play along with Obama's "transcendent" image and agenda, the candidate's revealing his true self as the campaign continues.

This is a good thing.

It's one of strengths of the American primary system - not always evident - that sometimes the process does work to give the voters a good look at candidates for election to the nation's highest office and to the position of leader of the free world.

Obama's comments in San Francisco were not uncontroversial, as some would have us think; and it's not hypocritical to flesh out the elitism that shows how out of touch Obama really is on key issues of importance to the American electorate.

But most of all, as McCarthy substantiates here, Obama's got a wide circle of friends composed of people who many would at least consider fringe operatives, if not outright enemies of the state.

Disqualification is the key word, and we need to repeat it, again and again and again.

By the way, Ben Smith provides the video from Obama's San Franciso campaign rally:

See also my introductory post in the "no enemies" series, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama

Photo Credit: FOX News