US News

REV.’S RANTS SHAKE VOTERS’ OBAMA FAITH

More than half of voters are less likely to support Barack Obama for president after hearing the anti-American rants of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a shocking poll revealed yesterday.

The Rasmussen Reports survey found that Wright’s controversial comments made 56 percent of voters, including 44 percent of Democrats, less inclined to vote for Obama.

The poll findings come as Obama has scheduled a major speech on racial issues today in Philadelphia to try to mitigate the damage to his campaign.

Two-thirds of the 1,200 people polled said they knew of Wright’s statements, which have been broadcast repeatedly on media outlets over the past several days.

And 73 percent of voters, including 58 percent of black voters, called Wright’s comments racially divisive.

In yet another Wright video that emerged yesterday, he is seen denouncing Israel as a “dirty word” and a “racist country” partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

“I said that dirty word again. Every time you say ‘Israel,’ Negroes get awfully quiet,” Wright said in a sermon he gave in September 2002.

“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. You don’t see a connection between 9/11/01 and the Israel-Palestinian [conflict]? Something wrong? You want to borrow my glasses?”

Other explosive comments that Wright made as pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago include blaming America for 9/11, accusing the government of creating AIDS and branding the country as “still the No. 1 killer in the world.”

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no. God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” Wright said in a 2003 sermon.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed said Obama should resign his membership from the church, from which Wright retired last month.

But there was a huge racial split, with most black voters saying he should stay and most white voters saying he should quit.

Meanwhile, Obama’s favorability rating plunged 5 points – from 52 to 47 percent – in four days, the poll revealed.

And he has lost ground to Republican John McCain in a general election matchup, trailing 48 to 42 percent after being even a week ago.

“The story just broke a couple of days ago. I’m really surprised on how quickly the story spread and how quickly it had an impact,” pollster Scott Rasmussen said.

Obama – who repeatedly condemned some of Wright’s incendiary comments over the weekend and cut him loose as a religious adviser to the campaign – was scheduled to give a speech today at the National Constitutional Center on “the larger issue of race in this campaign.”

He said the speech will address the Wright controversy and other racial issues, which could include remarks made by Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s camp, specifically those by ex-President Bill Clinton and Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro.

But Obama, in an interview with reporters yesterday, partially defended the preacher. He said Wright should not be solely judged from a few clips.

“The caricature that’s being painted of him is not accurate,” he said.

And he said he would talk about “how some of these [racial] issues are perceived from within the black church.”

Wright presided over Obama’s marriage to Michelle and baptized their two daughters.

Obama insisted he was not in the pews when Wright uttered anti-American, anti-white comments.

The title of Obama’s book, “Audacity of Hope,” is a phrase used in one of Wright’s sermons.

carl.campanile@nypost.com