Obama's Muslim Verbal Slip Hurts Him

With 12-15% of the voting public still convinced that Barack Obama is, was, and always will be a Muslim, and the seventh anniversary of 911 terrorist attacks imminently looming, the combination may spell serious news for him. The Democratic presidential nominee made what will be chronicled in the annals of the 2008 election post-reviews as the biggest faux pas of his political career on Sunday September 7, 2008.

During an ABC News' interview with George Stephanopoulos, Obama made the following statement:

"Let's not play games. What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith".

Clearly oblivious of the misapplied words he uttered about 'his Muslim faith'... Obama kept on talking until host Stephanopoulos jumped in to try and help the Illinois Senator clean up the huge gaffe. Stephanopoulos' suggestion that he may have meant to say his "Christian faith" was too little, too late as the-cows-were-already-out-of-barn door and the news was running across bloggersville!

Gaffes such as this have been known to sink a many political campaigns. And the particularly detrimental aspect to that segment of the interview, and what will surely raise further questions and doubts regarding Obama's Christian profession, was the cavalier/''oh, yeah... right' manner in which Obama interchanged the words 'Christian faith' in place of "Muslim faith'–– as if mixing up the two faiths is no big deal. Obama should have been a bit more apologetic or appeared more shaken to the core at saying 'my Muslim faith' instead of 'my Christian faith' while addressing this prickly issue.

In this right-now/You tube age of information dissemination, clips from the Stephanopoulos/Obama exchange are all over the Internet, and will be fodder for 527s in the upcoming weeks.

Obama's poll numbers will be closely watched in the next few weeks to determine just how bad...or not, the damage.