Appearing on the January 17 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Time magazine White House correspondent Mike Allen claimed that “probably” most people who watched Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) “say[] at the [2004 Democratic National] Convention, 'We worship an awesome God in the blue states, too,' " are unaware that “Senator Obama had 100 percent [rating] from Planned Parenthood when he was in the state legislature.” Allen's comments referenced a January 17 Associated Press article noting that Obama's “eight years as an Illinois state senator are sprinkled with potentially explosive land mines, such as his abortion and gun control votes.” Allen did not explain why voters might be surprised that Obama both claimed to believe in “an awesome God” and received a perfect score from Planned Parenthood as an Illinois state senator.

From the January 17 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

BECK: Unfortunately, not all of it is going to look exactly like that masterpiece many Americans have painted in their heads. Mike Allen is Time magazine's White House correspondent. Is Barack Obama the non-crazy Ross Perot, and we're just on a first date with him?

ALLEN: Well, Glenn, all this talk of grilled caribou is making me hungry, but I'll try to focus on the matter at hand. Glenn, you're right. Senator Obama is smoking right now, no doubt about it. You're right that none of those other candidates, Republicans or Democrats, are getting their picture with no shirt in People magazine as they try to have a beach vacation. And I think the Ross Perot analogy is a good one. You're right that right now people are projecting onto Senator Obama what they hope to see in a politician. But, you know, that's not a bad thing. And it's certainly not a bad place for Senator Obama to be positioned.

The question, Glenn, is whether people like the idea of Senator Obama in the way that you're describing, this sort of post-partisan, after November '06, “why can't we get along?” How will they feel as they learn more about Senator Obama, as they fill in the strokes, as you say? And, Glenn, that's already starting to happen today.

There was an Associated Press story today about the liberal votes that Senator Obama took when he was a state senator in Illinois. Now, one of his colleagues points out to me that none of these are likely to hurt him in a Democratic primary, but there's probably not many people who watched that clip of Senator Obama saying at the convention, “We worship an awesome God in the blue states, too,” who know that Senator Obama had 100 percent from Planned Parenthood when he was in the state legislature.