The Illinois senator raised $40 million in March, down $15 million from his staggering haul in February, and of course had a couple of fewer days to hit the huge number in the second month of the year.
March was the month of Jeremiah Wright, of course, and the start of the trial of Tony Rezko, Obama's mentor, friend and "neighbor." (Mrs. Rezko bought the empty lot next to the Obama's house as an assist to the young family's upward mobility.) It was also the month in which Barack Obama released tax returns that show him to be anything other than "middle class," and the month in which the "red phone" ad began to ring.
Obama looked flustered at times, and his recent declaration that unexpected pregnancies resulted in babies that were "punishments" further startled the pundit class. Team Clinton then released a detailed blast at a string of Obama "embellishments" intended to raise questions about whether anyone had really looked very closely at Obama's resume.
Sure enough, as scrutiny focused on a campaign questionnaire from his 1995 race for an Illinois state senate dug up by Politico.com (a questionnaire with Obama's handwritten notes on it), first reviews focused on his extreme positions from a dozen years ago, such as Obama's endorsement of a complete ban on the manufacture and possession of all handguns.
Obama's resume leaves a lot of digging left to be done. Obama's 1995 "biographical sketch," for example, included the statement that Obama's "commentaries have been heard on National Public Radio," which seems at best an exaggeration based upon a review of the NPR archives which finds a grand total of one such commentary. Other scrutiny has focused on an array of assertions made in Barack's 1995 memoir, which he himself read for an audiobook in 2005.
Obama's campaign pointed to 218,000 first time donors in march, but while that is a very healthy number for any campaign, who are they and did they come in from the far left side of the political spectrum.
Has Obama set the fringe on fire even as the center begins to flee, and Hilalry's hard core especially begins to sour on the next big thing with the vague promise of change?
It is clear that MSM has not recovered from its year-long swoon that has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Part of the Clintons' anger over the soft treatment Obama has received is not just the double standard at work in the primary, but also the frustration they feel knowing the number of skeletons dancing in Chicagoland closets. They can only imagine what treatment they would be receiving if Tony Rezko had helped them buy their New York suburban home, or if their pastor had denounced "white man's greed" in the first sermon they had ever heard him preach.
The Republicans are best advised to stay away from the burning building that is the Democratic Party.
But they should start the methodical exploration of Senator Obama's political history that the MSM seems wholly uninterested in conducting.
The frenzy over Obama's vague rhetoric may be over, but the long slog through his hard-left positions and past has just begun.