Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 7:36:36 PM
Last night, Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes ripped the Barack Obama campaign
and its supporters for the repetitive, unsubstantiated charges of
racism against John McCain’s campaign and Republicans in general.
Krauthammer in particular excoriated those tossing this rhetorical
bomb, at length. However, Barnes summed up exactly why they keep doing
it:
When John McCain runs an ad with a white woman, Paris
Hilton in it, he is accused of racism. He runs an ad with Franklin
Raines, the former head of Fannie Mae in it, who is African-American,
and that’s racist. And then he runs an ad with William Ayers, who is a
white male in it, and that’s racist.
If it weren’t so comical, these promiscuous accusations of racism, it would be tragic. …
And to accuse preemptively McCain of racism even before there is any
evidence of it, and there has not been any evidence of it before or
since, is scurrilous.
They say patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Accusations
of racism is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel, and it has been
used again and again on the part of the Obama campaign.
So why do they do it? It works. And why does it work? Barnes explains:
Right, because when they use it, it neutralizes an attack, and then you don’t have to answer it.
Rick Moran
made the same point yesterday. It’s a particularly vicious smear,
simply because it attacks presumed motives, not actual actions.
Somehow mentioning Ayers, who is white, is racist not because of Ayers
himself but because the critic supposedly operates from hate and
therefore every possible criticism is racist. And because it’s racist, the criticism requires no answer.