Bob McCarty Writes

Thanks largely to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his Republican vice presidential running mate, it appears the “Obama Phenomenon” is, as National Review Online’s Peter Wehner predicted in an article published June 13, beginning to be recognized as an “Obama Myth.”

Werner wrote:

If voters begin to believe that the Obama Phenomenon is really an Obama Myth – that he is just another conventional politician, but in this instance one who emerged out of the largely polluted waters of Chicago politics – then Obama is reduced to being a one-term senator with very few achievements in his life that commend him to be president.

In case anyone still needs more fact-versus-myth data to convince them that the Democratic Party presidential nominee is wrong for this country, I offer the following Five Myths Associated with Barack Obama:

MYTH #1: Barack Obama has strong support among evangelical Christians.

FACT #1: An Aug. 14 article in the Dallas Morning News offered a breathtaking rarity not often seen in today’s media. It’s writer passed on the Obama Kool-Aid and addressed reality.  Among other things, it cited a Pew poll published last month that showed Obama is doing worse among white Evangelicals than John Kerry was at this point in 2004, or Al Gore was in 2000.  (Hat tip: An Obama Nation)

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MYTH #2: Barack Obama doesn’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists.

FACT #2: An article published five months ago in USA TODAY revealed Obama had accepted donations from oil and gas company employees — $222,309 in Obama’s case from donors from Exxon, Shell, Chevron and others, according to campaign-finance data — and that two oil company CEOs pledged to raise at least $50,000 each as part of Obama’s fund-raising team.  (Hat tip:  Hot Air)

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MYTH #3:  “Blacks are less likely in their schools to have adequate funding.” Obama said while speaking to an audience in March 2007 in Selma, Ala., adding, “We have less-qualified teachers in those schools. We have fewer textbooks in those schools. We got in some schools rats outnumbering computers. That’s called the achievement gap.”

FACT #3: Like all bone-deep leftists, he ignores trillions of dollars that have been showered on the poor urban school districts since the War on Poverty was launched. He pushes for billions more, even while the evidence shows that this nation’s real quagmire is the high-funded, poor performing anti-poverty passion plays that go on in places like Camden, New Jersey, the “Poorest City in America.” (Hat tip:  Cinnaman)

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MYTH #4: Barack Obama spokesman David Axelrod claimed on May 30 that the Democratic presidential hopeful never disputed that the surge would make a difference in Iraq:
Axelrod: “[Obama] never disputed the fact that if you throw a surge of American soldiers in an area, that you can make a difference…” (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” 5/30/08)

FACT #4: When the surge was announced in January 2007, Obama said that it would not work and would actually increase sectarian violence:

“But right now what we have is, I think by all accounts, a disaster unfolding in Iraq. We all have a responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House, to make sure that we can come up with the best strategy. I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum — military and civilian, conservative and liberal — expressed great skepticism about it.” (MSNBC’s “Reaction To The State Of The Union Address,” 1/23/07) (Hat tip:  Reuters)

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MYTH #5: It was polished writing skills that earned then-Harvard Law student Barack Obama a sizable advance in exchange for writing his first memoir, Dreams From My Father.

FACT #5: A literary neophyte like Obama could not have written the memoir on his own, according to Jack Cashill in an article published Aug. 28. It was simply too well crafted.  Cashill goes on to write that he suspects the person responsible for Obama becoming an accomplished author is a man by the name of Khalid al-Mansour.