The McLaughlin Group---ALERT

This weekend, The McLaughlin Group switches networks for viewers in the New York and Washington areas. In New York, the show will no longer be seen on Sunday mornings at 11:30am ET on NBC. Instead, it will be seen on Sunday mornings at 11am ET on CBS (Channel 2). In Washington, the show will be seen at its usual time (11:30am ET) but on CBS (Channel 9). Viewers in the rest of the country will see the show as usual on PBS. Please tune in for the most freewheeling and fun Sunday morning show. You can go to www.mclaughlin.com for more show and station information.

DIS-Loyalty

"A faithful friend is a strong defense; and he that hath found such a one hath found a treasure." Ecclesiasticus, 6:14

For Hillary and Obama, so much for that!

This week, both of them had longstanding, previously loyal supporters come out of the shadows, remove a sword from its sheath, and sink it deep between their shoulder blades.

For Obama, it was his dear friend and confidante of 20 years, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who upended Obama's presidential campaign with his anti-American, hate-filled diatribes, and even more deadly, his suggestion that Obama believed the same but had to pretend he didn't in order to get elected.

The Hereditary Monarch stayed quiet while the Hope Guy flails.

For Hillary, it was Joe Andrews. Not exactly a household name, but an important one in Democratic circles. Andrews, who had been appointed by our Wild Hair Former President, Bill Clinton, as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had been close to the Clintons for years. He owed his national party standing to them. So, when she looked inevitable last year, he did the inevitable thing and endorsed her. Now that his Superdelegate-dom is more valuable than ever, he decided to switch his support over to the Hope Guy.

The Hereditary Monarch is not amused.

Obama has had fewer turncoats than Hillary (Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Bill Richardson....the list of "Judases" goes on.) Being stabbed in the back is part of politics. The question is how the candidate handles it.

If Hillary is the nominee, the Clintonian payback will be predictable and great fun to watch. But watch for the less predictable: what is the one thing we all know Hillary Clinton is NOT?

Forgiving.

What better way to show she's "magnanimous" than absolving these people of their sins of disloyalty? And perhaps even choosing, say, Mr. Richardson as a running mate?

And Now For the Good News

The U.S. economy is not in recession.

Despite what the left-wing press has been telling us for months---and what they have been trying to make true simply by saying it---there has not been an economic contraction.

In fact, the opposite has been true: According to the latest numbers from the Commerce Department, the nation's economy GREW at a slow but better-than-expected rate: a .6 percent increase in gross domestic product.

There are, of course, some significant problems: the housing and credit crunches, consumer spending down, a weak U.S. dollar, and ever-higher food and gas prices. But unemployment remains at historic lows: 5.1 percent. And businesses actually increased their investment in building up stocks of supplies, and U.S. exports are up.

This good economic news doesn't mean there aren't real problems effecting real people. This is why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are focusing on the bad news. For them, trolling for votes means pounding the message of "economic crises" and offering themselves as miracle workers who will solve them. (Of course, we know that when liberals are allowed anywhere near the economy, they wreak socialist disaster.)

We also know that presidents get the credit when the economy is good and the blame when it's bad, and neither is really fair. President Bush has been lambasted for the state of the economy for months on end. Now we know that not only is the economy not in recession, it's growing.

The American economy is a sprawling, complex organism with billions of moving parts. Does it have some significant problems? You bet. It always does. But those problems should not be highlighted to the exclusion of the bigger picture, which shows growth and innovation and above all, resilience.

A Change We Can't Believe In

Today we witnessed a turning point in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination. In a campaign that has seen many seminal moments (the Hope Guy upsetting the Hereditary Monarch in Iowa; the Hereditary Monarch's tears pre-New Hampshire; the Wallflower 42nd president chuckling over comparisons between Jesse Jackson and the Hope Guy; sniper fire; the rantings of a neo-segregationist preacher), this seminal moment may be the most important of all.

Barack Obama went before the cameras today to do something just a few weeks ago he said he wouldn't do. He "denounced" his longtime pastor, confidante, and close friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for Wright's incendiary comments about America and certain groups of Americans.

On March 18th in Philadelphia, he said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community....These people are a part of me."

That, of course, was the truth. The truth is that Obama cares deeply for Wright, the man who counseled him, married him to Michelle, baptized his daughters. The truth is Obama appreciated and respected Wright and his message enough to sit in his pews for 20 years. The truth is that he didn't want to disown or disavow him, because he believes in him. The truth is he wanted political distance from Wright without having to throw his friend completely under the bus.

All of that changed over the past five days, when Wright embarked on his "Pastor Ambition Tour" and reiterated---this time, in "context"---his most inflammatory comments: that the U.S. government created the HIV virus to decimate the black community, that we deserved the attacks of September 11, that Louis Farrakhan is someone to admire greatly, and that God does, in fact, damn America.

After five days of having those comments sit out there, festering and metastasizing, Obama had to do what he didn't want to do. And say what he didn't---doesn't---want to say.

Reverend Wright's comments were "offensive," he said, and "they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing here today."

He also proclaimed himself "outraged."

"Outrage" of this kind, however, doesn't develop days, weeks, months, years after the fact. If Obama had been genuinely outraged, we would have heard about that outrage a lot sooner than today.

He referred to Wright's Monday morning speech and Q and A session, where many of these comments were reiterated and detailed, a "spectacle."

Did Obama not think Wright's ranting and raving from the pulpit was also not a "spectacle?" How many of those sermons did Obama sit through without thinking any of them were "spectacles?"

He said that the Wright he has seen over the past few days "was not the person I met 20 years ago," and "I may not know him as well as I thought."

By all accounts, Wright has been speaking this way, preaching this way, and believing this way since Obama began attending his church. Where was Obama? Where was he in the church, and where was he in the friendship?

The answer, of course, is that Obama was intimately present in both. He wants us to believe he's breaking with Wright because he's suddenly "outraged" by his comments. The truth is he's "outraged" by the fact that Hillary is now gaining on him. He hasn't won a primary since February 22. She just picked up the endorsement of the governor of North Carolina, which will host another big primary next week. Obama is looking at internal polls that show Wright is a bigger drag on him than Bill is on her.

This is the only reason we heard this statement from Obama today. Not because he wanted to give it; not because he believes what he said. He had to do it, or watch the Hereditary Monarch and her Certifiable Husband walk away with the nomination. (Mighty telling that we've heard nary a peep from either of them in the last 48 hours.)

This may very well be the end of the Hope Guy. It is certainly the end of his "different kind of politics." He polled and tested and focus-grouped, saw the need for damage control, made a statement he doesn't believe, and cut his friend loose. He is no longer Barack Obama, Transcendent Messiah, but Barack Obama, Regular Pol.

Ciao for now, Pastor. (But just for now.)

Loose "Change"

"A change is comin." So says the Reverend Jeremiah Wright over and over again. During his incendiary but brutally honest "Pastor Ambition Tour," he has proclaimed that "a change is comin'. I can feel it." I say "brutally honest" because despite what you may think of Reverend Wright, he tells you exactly what he thinks, and he means what he says. Sure, he changes his tone based on his audience: to white audiences (Bill Moyers, the National Press Club), he's softer-spoken, and he doesn't drop his "g's." To black audiences, he's a podium-slamming, fist-pounding, neo-segregationist with a penchant for mocking white people. But regardless of how it's delivered, the message is the same: black liberation theology, which demands an "apology" for slavery from the current generation, formal U.S. government prostration, and ultimately, reparations. And that, of course, is just be the beginning. The list of grievances to be redressed is lengthy, with new insults added all the time.

Wright doesn't profess to believe in anything else. In that sense, he's much less a dissembler than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

This brings us to the Reverend's longtime spiritual and intellectual student. There is Obama, campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina, gymnasiums and podiums festooned with HIS central theme: "Change We Can Believe In."

After hearing Wright define exactly what he means and what he thinks, it is now impossible for Obama to dodge telling us exactly what HE means and what HE thinks. Wright's speeches are now a call for specificity from Barack Obama. The days of allowing Obama to leave himself as an undefined, vague, "Hope, Unity, and Change Guy" must end.

It is now incumbent on Obama to tell us what HE means by "change." Is his use of "change" the same as Wright's? Senator: you sat at his feet, absorbing his teachings like a sponge for 20 years. How does Wright's version of "change" agree with yours? Or differ from yours?

By the way, Senator, what IS your version of "change?"

How can we vote for "Change We Can Believe In" when you won't even tell us what, exactly, we are "believing in?"