The nutty right is still at it

Peggy Noonan's Litmus Test: Does Obama love Sutter's Mill? America demands an answer.

By Timothy Noah
Slate.com
Posted Monday, April 28, 2008

When I think about all the hoops Barack Obama is being made to jump through in order to prove he's a patriotic American, I feel nostalgic for the days when the press thought Obama's biggest negative was his supposed inexperience relative to Hillary Clinton (see "Hillary's Experience Lie").

First Obama had to distance himself from some bizarre comments made by his former pastor. Then he had to explain why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin often enough to suit Charlie Gibson of ABC News. Then he had to distance himself from a former member of the Weather Underground to whom he was introduced when he decided to run for the Illinois Senate but with whom he has since had scant contact. Then he had to distance himself from Hamas, a terrorist organization he has repeatedly condemned, simply because its chief political adviser, Ahmed Yousefat, expressed admiration for him. Now Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal demands that Obama demonstrate he carries sufficient love within his breast for … Sutter's Mill.

I'm not making this up. Here is what Noonan wrote:

Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over … the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history.

(Continued here.)