First of all, it was the Hillary campaign that got the ball rolling on Reverend Wright. While various conservatives continued to talk about it in the general, the McCain campaign stayed away from it.
And second, the issue was never Obama's 'religious beliefs.' I never saw a single criticism of him for being a protestant Christian. The issue was the pastor at his church. I would argue he was somewhat open to criticism there because he selected Reverend Wright's church out of the many churches on Chicago's south side.
There has been a lot of speculation (most of it rather cynical) as to why he plucked Wright from the chorus. One argument holds that as a transplant to Chicago who had been raised in Hawaii by white people, Obama needed 'cred' in not only in Chicago itself, but in the black south side community in particular. One largely forgotten story about Obama's rise is the resistance he encountered breaking into the Chicago black establishment. He was shellacked by Bobby Rush when he ran for Congress and was socially shunned by the black legislative crew in Springfield. Many of them viewed him as an upstart who had not put in his time and attempted to circumvent the 'machine,' as it were.
That even lasted a little bit into his run for president. A couple major legislators and civil rights figures, including John Lewis, initially endorsed Hilary (I suspect partly because they thought she would win and partly as a favor to Bill). It took a while before the black community was solidly in Obama's corner, which ended up causing Lewis to issue a rather embarrassing retraction of his endorsement.
Another argument I've heard holds that Obama had difficulty connecting with the primarily working class black Chicago clergy. As a man of Columbia and Harvard, he preferred the company of a relatively erudite character like Wright. That's not saying that he disdained or looked down upon the other clergymen, but he had more in common with somebody like Wright
In any case, if you buy the cynical explanations (and I do), the irony of the whole Reverend Wright flap was that it's possible Obama didn't even particularly care for Wright's political messages but was essentially using him and his church for political purposes. I don't think it was all Machiavellian here - he and Wright did become friends, although that friendship wasn't able to survive Obama's emergence as a viable national candidate.
So I would disagree that you can equate criticizing Mitt for being born into Mormonism with Obama choosing a specific church in his 30s. That's not to say there aren't thing to criticize about Mormonism, but I hesitate to compare this to Wright. Criticizing a pastor is not the same as criticizing a whole denomination.
= new reply since forum marked as read
