by Tunku Varadarajan Info
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU's Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
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President Obama campaigned for Senator Harry Reid in July. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images) As they head toward November, Democrats are facing a terrifying political reality: that their fortunes will be tied to where they come down on the mosque near ground zero.
The November elections are very close to becoming—if they haven’t already so become—the first national elections in the United States whose results are determined by the location of a mosque. Call them, in fact, the “Mosque Elections.”
Forget health-care reform and unbridled stimulus spending; forget perceived errors in Iraq and Afghanistan; forget unemployment and our economy’s endless night; forget, if you can, the toxic questions of illegal immigration and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. If the promoters of the mosque near ground zero do not pack up their Korans and prayer mats within the next week or so, there is every danger that they will cause the Democrats grievous harm in November—in an election that is already one in which the Democrats are bracing for a rout.
Facing possible defeat in November, the principle-free Reid is alarmed enough to stress publicly that he “isn’t with” the dude who likes the mosque. Good luck to him.
And why is that? Because Barack Obama has made the mosque-near-ground zero an election issue, placing this house of Islamic worship bang-center on the electoral stage. As we all now know, he was first for it, in a seemingly courageous assertion of the American freedom to worship in the manner and place of one’s choice; and then, a day later, he appeared to tone down his support, explaining that he was commenting on the Muslims’ “right” to a mosque, not on the “wisdom” of plunking it near ground zero.
• Peter Beinart: America Has Disgraced Itself with Mosque Fury• Full coverage of the mosque debateMaladroitly, in the space of 24 hours, the president placed the mosque on the national agenda, effectively making of it a nightmarish litmus test for every Democrat running for office in November. No Democrat, now, will be spared the blunt question: Do you support Obama’s position on the mosque? Effectively, they will be asked: Are you for, or against, the mosque? Embedded in that question: How do you rate Obama? And how can any Democrat come stirringly to the defense of the mosque if the president himself has pussyfooted on the subject?
Now imagine that you’re a Democrat in a tight race (and there are many of you). What do you say? If you support Obama on this question, you open yourself up to full-bore fire from the populist right. And if you don’t support Obama, you not only undermine the Democratic edifice, you must also resort to freelance language that is at pains to explain why you are somehow a Democrat, but not an Obama Democrat.
Imagine if that were to happen in race upon race across the country. And imagine, also, the collective unspooling of the party that could result from all of this: Once you start to differentiate yourself from the president on the mosque, you are tempted, also, to talk down health care, and the stimulus, and everything else that Obama stands for. What is left, then, of a collective platform? And what is left, then, of Obama?
No wonder Harry Reid is in a profound panic, calling—at the risk of embarrassing his president—for the mosque to be built elsewhere. Is this the start of an insurrection? Perhaps. Facing possible defeat in November, the principle-free Reid is alarmed enough to stress publicly that he “isn’t with” the dude who likes the mosque. Good luck to him.
Lost in this swirl, ironically, is the fact that the real, crying shame of ground zero is that the World Trade Center is still a hole in the ground. Why does no one mention this disgrace to New York City, and to the nation?
But that is a question best postponed; and that is another story.
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU's Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
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The Muslims behind this "mosque business" are either horrifically insensitive or spiritually complicit in the 9/11 attacks. I suspect it's a little of both, and now President Obama has thrown in his lot with them.This has NOTHING to do with "religious freedom." It has EVERYTHING to do with sensitivity, respect and good faith.The Muslims pushing this mosque project, AND President Obama, are horrifically insensitive, they totally lack respect for others and are acting wholly in bad faith.
Oh, Jack, what a load of crap. This building is to be a community center with a small part for a prayer 'room'. It has been nine years since the destruction of the WTC. How long should they wait to build this building??? Ten more years? Would that be more sensitive??? This is a tempest in a teapot that the Reps decided to use against the President to gain momentum toward November elections. This building has EVERYTHING to do with religion and NOTHING to do with sensitivity, respect and good faith, in the minds of some unthinking Americans.
Really? What about the Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed at ground zero? They still have not gotten approval to rebuild and are being fought by the city tooth and nail.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19church.htmlYears later, they still don't have approval.
newswoman - 'Community Center'? More like wolf in sheep's clothing - at least that's how most people are interpreting it, especially given the historical roots of Muslim conquest of the original building title - Cordoba House. You ask how long to wait - would you approve of a Japanese Yakinisu Shrine honoring the brave Japanese soldiers being built at Pearl Harbor, even tho it's 60 years later? -- Look, if the world was at total peace and we had nothing to fear from the questionable teachings in the Koran, and Islam had no track record for extreme unexpected attacks, then there'd be no opposition to the mosque. If 9/11 was the ONLY attack in the history of Islam, we'd have no problem holding hands and regarding the attacker as a deranged radical. But that isn't the case.. and yes, for many Americans who lost family and friends, it is still a sensitive issue. The uproar response simply reinstates that. Which would you choose if you're the financer - Build something that offends and is a sensitive issue for millions of the people surrounding it and potentially creates anger and violence, even if your intentions were pure; or say "Ok, I understand (Sheesh!)" and build it somewhere a little farther away, still serving the same purpose and not inciting any anguish? That seems like an easy choice, doesn't it? Which is what proves the intention here is not pure, instead it's either - a false front, a sign of triumph over infidels, a huge publicity stunt, a mid-terms election stunt, or something similar of that nature. Call me paranoid, but I'm right on the results 90% of the time.
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