This is brilliant.
The next time someone – particularly a supporter of Sen Obama – brings up the issue of race in this presidential election direct them to the latest by Charles Krauthammer, “Obama’s Betrayed Message”. In a nutshell Krauthammer shows how McCain has been most unfairly accused of racebaiting – and such unfair accusations have in effect silenced McCain on legitimate points against Sen Obama.
And not only that. But Sen Obama himself has played the race card brilliantly. The final paragraphs bring it home:
In the name of racial rectitude, McCain has denied himself the use of that perfectly legitimate issue. It is simply Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism. What makes it doubly Orwellian is that these charges are being made on behalf of the one presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and indeed quite brilliantly, deployed the race card.
…
And Obama has shown no hesitation in doing so to McCain. Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has “a funny name” and “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”
McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.
What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
I once believed him.
Read the whole thing at Townhall.com. You do not have to register.
