I read an article from Ken Blackwell of the Washington SUn, and it's an opinion piece, but it's gonna scare a lot of people ranging from the middle to the right.

Ken Blackwell - Columnist for the New York Sun  

    It's an amazing time to be alive in America. We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.    
    We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.    

    Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.  
    The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him. 
    Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts. 

    Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.    Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost. 
      Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.

    Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."  
      Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk. 
    Next, consider economic policy For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago . Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich." How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.  
    Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban - ban - on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francis co values, not Middle America values. 
    The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting hi s liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.        
    But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and - yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton. 

If you pick the right metric and the right black/white axis on left/right positions, you can paint anybody as the most anything.  That's how Kerry got painted that way.  Don't fall for it.

As for Obama's foreign policy - NOW you're hitting the right whack-a-mole!  Fuck what his wife and preacher says, or if he's circumcised, or whether he's ever snorted cocaine off an underage circus performer's left thigh - the issues matter more than if someone wears white after Labor Day or ever put a feminine hygiene device on a Christmas tree.  I may disagree with your opinion, but if you formed it from clay and not horseshit, then you are rising above the current political discourse and for that I would be honored to shake your hand.

As for Obama's foreign policy:  His foreign policy statements fill me with hope that we can begin to erase the stain of the last eight years.  It's the primary reason I'd vote for him.

Jeez, I wouldn't put too much faith in that article - the guy who wrote it has some serious logic issues.

Where to begin?

He's worried about us invading Pakistan to get OBL.  First off?  To get OBL.  Shaaaaaame on the current administration for dropping that frickin' ball!  But next?  Sure they have nukes.  But they don't have ICBMs.  And fact of the matter, I can't see them not working with us in the long run; if anything, to try to get us to support them over India.

He's worried that Obama won't nuke terrorists?  How do you nuke a terrorist?  You nuke cities.  Not terrorists.  There's no terrorist city. 

Seriously - this guy is questioning Obama's political ideas?

Next, he's worried about Obama taxing the rich - I get that - he's against taxes - who isn't? - so any tax is a bad tax and Obama should be ashamed, etc.  But he's not creating some new tax for the rich - he's undoing Bush's tax cuts for the rich, which were a terrible burden for America and for the working class of America.  He's not creating some new burden for America - he's fixing something that Bush broke.  As much as the working stiff doesn't like to see FICA on his paystub, I think he'll realize the difference between what Obama's doing and what this guy is saying.

I mean - sure - you don't like taxes?  Ok.  Let's all stop paying them.  Good luck with those schools, bridges, roads, libraries, police, firefighters, military, etc and so on.  No one likes paying them, but we're deeply ingrained in a system that relies on them.

Finally - this nut is all mad that Obama is ok with same-sex marriage.  (Uh, actually, he's not.  He's for civil unions, but let's work with the point we've got here)   What this shows is the author's agenda and personal hatreds.  Power to Obama for being more open-minded.

And, yes, I do believe that there are a lot of decent Christians out there - but I don't think the fundementalist nuts - meaning the author of this piece, or members of the current administration - are representative of these nuts, and I agree with Obama that the good name of Christianity is being tarnished by these fringe-dwellers who have so vocally represented the faith for the last 30 years or so.

Ken Blackwell should go back to fashion commentary and leave politics to people with sense.

(Being deliberately ignorant there.  It's a post-modern thing.  Just like pointing out something is post-modern is the new post-post-pre-modern paradigm.)

(Sometimes I'm not deliberately ignorant, but I have to rely on others to point that out.  Think about it.)