Obama’s mosque support hurts Democrats

FALLOUT from US President Barack Obama’s intervention in controversial plans for a mosque near Ground Zero has enveloped Democrats campaigning for November’s mid-term congressional elections.

The most senior Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, revealed he was opposed to the mosque being built two blocks from where 2700 people died at the hands of Islamist terrorists on September 11, 2001.

“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” Senator Reid’s spokesperson said. “Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

Other Democrats in tight races for re-election have privately expressed irritation at Mr Obama’s apparent support for the project, which had elevated what had been essentially a New York issue into a national controversy.

Referring to Mr Obama’s reversal on Saturday from his seemingly unambiguous advocacy for the mosque a day earlier, one Democrat strategist said the President had turned “a moment of political clarity into one of political confusion”.

Opinion polls show most Americans oppose the $US110 million ($A123 million) project that would incorporate an interfaith community centre with swimming pool and other facilities to be built on the site of an old clothing factory less than a kilometre from where hijackers flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Centre.

The opposition comes despite two other mosques having stood for decades within four and 12 blocks of the site.

The issue is testing the notion of religious freedom, regarded by Americans as an integral component of the nation’s DNA.

Some Democrats have voiced support for Mr Obama’s stance, including New York congressman Jerrold Nadler, who said government “has no business deciding whether there should or should not be a Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero”.

But Republicans have seized on the issue to claim that Mr Obama is out of touch with mainstream America, while media snapshots of passers-by in Lower Manhattan have recorded a constant refrain: “Not in my neighbourhood.”

Senator Reid’s position was drawn out by his opponent in Nevada’s hotly contested Senate race, Sharron Angle, a Tea Party-endorsed Republican who had challenged him not to again side with Mr Obama – “this time against the families of 9/11 victims”.

The President’s comments were also seized on by other Republican hopefuls in other state contests. Multimillionaire Rick Scott, who is trying to win Republican preselection for the Florida governor’s race, used a television advertisement to declare that Mr Obama was wrong about the need for tolerance: “It’s about truth – Muslim fanatics murdered thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11 just yards from the proposed mosque.”

And former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, labelled those behind the mosque project as Islamists whom he compared to the Nazis.

Mr Obama’s endorsement of the mosque came at a White House dinner honouring the breaking of the daily fast in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

TheAge.com.au