Two politically attuned professors in the South called the sharp rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright understandable in the context of an inner-city, largely black church, and both experts marveled at how political opponents seized upon the former pastor’s relationship to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president despite opposition from Focus on the Family leader James Dobson and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, traveled to New Orleans last month seeking support from conservative true believers.
“We’ve got to get our base moving again,” he told the Council for National Policy at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Arizona senator, who has earned conservatives’ enmity in the past, was trying to mend fences on March 7 with more than 400 influential social conservatives.