One of the more outrageous chapters during presidential campaign season so far, the press harassment of 2016 GOP candidate and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in February over his statement that he "doesn't know" whether President Barack Obama is a Christian, is back.
Nobody in the press seems interested in asking Obama himself how he can still profess to be a Christian and support homosexual marriage, especially when he referenced his Christian beliefs as a basis for his stated opposition to it in 2008. Nor are they curious in learning how Obama can square his self-professed Christianity with his support for abortion at every in utero stage — and arguably beyond that. And of course, nobody is asking Hillary Clinton to declare whether she believes any of her potential November 2016 opponents is a genuine Christian. Yet here was Philip Elliott, who recently left the Associated Press for Time.com, getting a case of the vapors on Saturday when Walker, asked again, basically said, "I don't know, but I presume he is":
“I don’t know,” the Republican presidential candidate said Saturday during an appearance before 450 donors to the political network backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch. “I presume he is,” Walker continued when asked if he has had time to check since he set off a firestorm in February when he couldn’t answer if the President is Christian.
“You’re not going to get a different answer than I said before,” Walker said toward the end of a Q&A session moderated by Politico’s Mike Allen. Walker said he’s never asked Obama about his faith. “As someone who is a believer myself, I don’t presume to know someone’s beliefs about whether they follow Christ or not unless I’ve actually talked with him.”
Seriously, Phil, what in the heck is wrong with that?
Walker doesn't know whether Obama is a Christian, but presumes he is based on what he's read and heard (an arguably far too generous assessment, given what I noted earlier), and won't know (and maybe never will know) until he's had deep discussions with him.
Elliott spent his next two paragraphs whining:
Obama is Christian, attends Christian services and has spoken frequently about his Christian faith. During his 2008 campaign, he was held to account for statements made in his Christian church in Chicago. His harshest critics often—wrongly—contend that he a is Muslim.
That’s not enough to settle the matter definitively for Walker.
Well, Phil, if you think your snit fit ends the discussion once and for all, you're wrong:
- Just because you say you're a Christian doesn't mean you objectively are.
- Obama's attendance at church services has been rare enough that it has raised eyebrows — just 19 times in nearly six years, as of December.
- Instead of speaking about "his" Christian faith, he has more recently taken to criticizing "less than loving Christians."
- In the 2008 campaign, he was not held to account for statements made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former Muslim, at the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Chicago. Instead, the press let Obama dodge accountability by accepting Obama's utterly implausible claim that he was never in the building when the church's pastor made incendiary remarks, even though by all accounts they occurred quite frequently, and Obama described himself as a somewhat regular church attendee. One such episode included Wright's contention in a sermon that America deserved to be attacked by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, and specifically that it represented "America's chickens coming home to roost."
- The press also let Obama get away with the almost equally implausible claim that he never read any of the incendiary items in the TUCC bulletins — even though he was seen taking notes in what was very likely a church bulletin by a then-writer for the New Republic.
Others in the media are attempting a reprise of the February Walker pile-on, apparently determined to horsewhip Walker into submission about a topic relating to someone whose name isn't going to be on the 2016 ballot. Don't hold your breath, guys. Walker's answer is perfectly reasonable — arguably to a fault.
These are the same people who often complain loud and long about the lack of substance in presidential campaigns.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
