Obama needs to be Machiavellian on Park51

Here's what Obama should really say about Park51 and Muslim religious freedom. He should say that this tarring of all Muslims with the same brush looks suspiciously similar to the medieval Christian "blood guilt" claim made against Jews, based on the Gospel of Matthew. He should ask whether Jews, having been at the receiving end of that for more than a millennium, really want to be dishing it out now.

Some of the Jewish wing of neoconservatives might actually be shamed; others might look more askance at the fundamentalist Christian wing. And, there's the Machiavellianism: maybe Prez Kumbaya, if he sang from a different playbook and found some cojones, could split neocons.

Now, here's more on why Obama needs to do this, and why it might work: Jeffrey Goldberg's latest nuttery:

Goldberg claims, hopefully (but probably not) in jest, that occasionally "heated" anti-Muslim rhetoric is dwarfed by "open bigotry toward evangelical Christians" on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. If anyone can point to anything published in the Times that is as hysterically anti-Christian as, say, any random week's worth of Andy McCarthy's contributions to the National Review, please let me know.

But, we know Obama is pretty tone deaf to much besides Kumbaya, and that he pawned his balls to the Revvvvv. Jeremiah Wright, or somebody, long ago.

So, this won't really happen.