Yglesias is absolutely right:
Specifically, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on whose board Obama served gave a grant to an outfit called the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS). CIESS was “linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system” called the “South Shore African Village Collaborative.” According to Kurtz, this network which was linked to an organization which got a grant from a group on whose board Obama served, “was very much a part of the Afrocentric ‘rites of passage movement’” and also at time did events featuring guys named Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard. These two, in turn, seem to have held fringy opinions somewhat similar to some of Jeremiah Wright’s fringy opinions. Ergo, according to Kurtz, Wright is back on the table.
I’d say McCain’s in luck with this one! Obama’s doomed!
Seriously, though, is there anyone who could withstand this kind of guilt-by-association. Obama was on the board of an outfit that gave a grant to an outfit that was linked to another outfit that organized an event where some dude spoke, and thus Obama is responsible for the dude? Really? I spoke at the Heritage Foundation once. Does that make Heritage’s board members responsible for stuff on my blog? It doesn’t make any sense.
It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to scare people. Radical! Liberal! America-hater! Scary black man! Booga booga booga!
It all boils down to what we have been saying over and over again- the conservative movement is dead. They have no ideas. They have no vision. They have soundbites about tax cuts and American exceptionalism, and little else. Hell, in unguarded moments when they put down the pom-poms they will admit they hate McCain’s ideas when he talks about anything other than permanent war.
Go read the Corner. The only thing you will find are lame guilt-by-association attacks, tawdry smears, glowing reviews of An American Carol and whinges about media bias.The premiere conservative magazine, the National Review, has not had an honest to goodness new idea in it for as long as I can remember, and instead, has a dozen brain-dead hacks like McCarthy and Kurtx and K-Lo and Goldberg who do nothing but spend time telling you why the opposition is evil and must be defeated.
This is a movement on life support. It is time to pull the plug.