Reacting to Mitt Romney’s discomfort toward proposed independent expenditure ads reminding Americans of President Obama’s connections to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, on FNC Thursday night Charles Krauthammer delivered a rebuke to the media’s presumption raising Wright would be illegitimate. Krauthammer sure didn’t hold back:
I think there is an appalling double standard here. It’s okay for the Washington Post to run a five thousand word front page story on a prank that Romney, at the age of 15, committed. And yet it’s somehow illegitimate, the low road or whatever, for people to bring up the fact that the adult Obama had a 20-year relationship with a racist anti-American preacher whom he considered, spoke about, wrote about as his mentor and spiritual advisor.
On FNC’s Special Report, the syndicated conservative columnist advised that bringing up Wright now would be a tactical “mistake” since “we know who Obama is. He isn’t the unknown of ‘08. He’s got a record,” but, he maintained, “in principle, if you want to do it, it would be completely legitimate and I think the double standard ought to be denounced rather than accepted as everybody, including Romney, does.”
Earlier, from Clay Waters: “GOP's Anti-Jeremiah Wright Strategy ‘Incendiary, Racially Tinged’....But Wright Himself Isn’t?”
Krauthammer, during the panel segment on the May 17 Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC:
I think there is an appalling double standard here. It’s okay for the Washington Post to run a five thousand word front page story on a prank that Romney, at the age of 15, committed. And yet it’s somehow illegitimate, the low road or whatever, for people to bring up the fact that the adult Obama had a 20-year relationship with a racist anti-American preacher whom he considered, spoke about, wrote about as his mentor and spiritual advisor. That is a double standard unlike any I’ve ever seen.
Now John McCain accepted it in his campaign. I think it was mistake and I think it’s legitimate in a case of a man as unknown as Obama to ask, of whom there was no history, there was no legislative achievements or signature intellectual achievements. He wrote two books that were both about himself incidentally – which might have been a clue. But other than that, we didn't know him and illegitimate to ask about his associates? How else would you know him, him and William Ayers? But McCain accepted it. I thought it was a tactical error, but I understand the noble intent that was behind it.
But today, I would say, tactically it’s a mistake because we know who Obama is. He isn’t the unknown of ‘08. He’s got a record and you don’t have to bring it up. But in principle, if you want to do it, it would be completely legitimate and I think the double standard ought to be denounced rather than accepted as everybody, including Romney, does.
