The furor over the mosque being built near Ground Zero has exposed the "pretensions" of politicians on both sides of the aisle, says Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast. It has revealed the GOP to be "a party seething with hatred towards vulnerable religious and ethnic groups." But it has also proven the Democrats to be utter cowards at best, and opportunists, if not "actual bigots," at worst. Faced with an "anti-Muslim stampede," they stand mostly silent. In 2008, Obama promised that a party under his leadership would stand up for what was right, and not consult opinion polls to decide what it ought to believe in. What happened? Here, an excerpt:
"[Obama's] initial statement in support of the mosque was laudable; his subsequent efforts to deny that that's what he meant have been pathetic. Yes, the polling is bad; standing up for a religious minority being made to feel like a pariah in its own land might cost Obama a few approval points. So what. Core convictions are worth losing approval points over.
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