Conservatives shouldn't play the race card, either

“Take one of them,” liberal blogger Spencer Ackerman wrote during the 2008 election, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: Why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems?”

In all likelihood, Ackerman (a good defense writer) was swept up by election-season passion and looking to retaliate against what he saw as unscrupulous conservative attacks (regarding Jeremiah Wright, in this case). But we know this is how the Left plays hardball. Byron York, now my Examiner colleague, summed up well this “standard rhetorical device of the Left: If you can’t win an argument with a conservative, call him a racist.”