Still Undecided?

Thinking you might vote for Barak Obama? Before you do, read Stanley Kurtz’s Senator Stealth.

Kurtz provides a summary:

Have you ever heard of the Gamaliel Foundation? Neither has anyone else. Certainly, the press has avoided the topic. Yet Barack Obama’s very first “community organizer” experience came when he was working for the Gamaliel Foundation. What does the Gamaliel Foundation believe? It turns out that Gamaliel follows an anti-American ideology quite like that of Jeremiah Wright. You’d think that would be news. Yet perhaps for that very reason, so-called news organizations have avoided the issue.

“Senator Stealth” goes on to show how a pattern of stealthy and incremental radicalism is second nature to the community organizers Obama worked with. When Obama tells us that his political worldview was shaped, above all, by his days as a community organizer, I believe him. Up to now, however, Obama has relied on the fact that nobody knows what community organizers actually believe in or do. In “Senator Stealth,” I offer a detailed explanation of what Obama’s favorite community organizers are all about.

I’ve long been suspicious and skeptical of politicians claiming to be “common-sense pragmatists”. Now I know why. Read the whole thing. No matter who wins Tuesday, this is stuff you need to know. And the Gamaliel and ACORN radicals aren’t going away next week no matter what.

Even after becoming a U.S. senator, Obama has maintained his ties to the Gamaliel Foundation. According to an October 2007 report for the University of California by Todd Swanstrom and Brian Banks, “it is almost unheard of for a U.S. Senator to attend a public meeting of a community organization, but Senator Obama attended a Gamaliel affiliate public meeting in Chicago.” Given this ongoing contact, given the radicalism of Gamaliel’s core ideology, given Obama’s close association with Gamaliel’s co-founder, Gregory Galluzzo, given Obama’s role as a Gamaliel consultant and trainer, and given Obama’s outsized role in channeling allegedly “nonpartisan” funding to Gamaliel affiliates (and to his political ground troops at ACORN), some questions are in order. Obama needs to detail the nature of his ties to both Gamaliel and ACORN, and should discuss the extent of his knowledge of Gamaliel’s guiding ideology. Ultimately, we need to know if Obama is the post-ideological pragmatist he sometimes claims to be, or in fact a stealth radical.

Frankly I’ve never seen him as all that stealthy. But if you still think Obama is “pragmatic”, consider your eyes opened.