Mosque issue a Democratic hurdle

WASHINGTON – Add another election-year hurdle for Democrats: President Barack Obama’s forceful defense of the right of Muslims to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.

His comments are giving Republicans a campaign-year cudgel and forcing Democrats to address a divisive issue within weeks of midterm contests that will decide the balance of power in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a competitive re-election fight, was the highest profile Democrat to move away from Obama on the matter.

“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley said in a statement Monday. “Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.”

Some Democratic candidates fear the political fallout that Republicans suggest is coming against those who support building a mosque two blocks from the lower Manhattan site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And some Republicans are trying to walk a careful line in their criticism, lest they be tagged religiously intolerant or be accused of stoking fear.

Former Sen. Dan Coats, who is challenging Rep. Brad Ellsworth for an Indiana Senate seat, said: “It’s an insult I think to the people who lost lives there.”

Former state Rep. Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma who served in Iraq, said ground zero is a “grossly inappropriate” place for a mosque. “I think it sends a message to terrorists that they’ve won, and I think that’s a mistake,” he said.

One of the few to praise the president was Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York.

“If we shut down – shout down – a mosque and community center because it is two blocks away from the site where freedom was attacked, I think it would be a sad day for America,” Bloomberg told reporters Monday.

For weeks, the White House had refused to interject itself into what it called a local zoning issue even though the mosque debate had taken on national significance with Republicans such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich forcefully opposing it.

It’s a tricky issue and not just because of the emotional nature of the attacks executed by terrorists from Muslim countries. Americans view Muslims far less favorably than other religious groups.

Obama waded into the debate Friday at the annual White House dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, saying: “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

Republicans, led by several considering challenging Obama in 2012, assailed the president.

“We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?” Palin asked on Twitter. “This is not above your pay grade.”

More bluntly, Gingrich accused Obama of “pandering to radical Islam” and said: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a sight next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”