Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
November 30, 2009
Blogger Andrew Sullivan charged Sunday that, whereas in December of last year I advocated a gasoline tax, in my “latest column” on climate change, “the gas tax idea is missing.”
“Why?” asks Sullivan. Because: “In the end, the conservative intelligentsia is much more invested in obstructing and thereby neutering Obama and the Democrats than in solving any actual problems in front of us. It’s a game for them, and they play it with impunity.”
He calls this “The Positioning Of Charles Krauthammer,” a demonstration of rank partisanship and bad faith.
It is quite a charge: This “latest column” proves that I’ve positioned my views on a gasoline tax for reasons cynically partisan, mindlessly anti-Obama, interested only in the game of power and not in the welfare of the country. In other words, so blinded by selfishness as to be unpatriotic.
However, there’s a slight problem with Sullivan’s analysis. If you click on the column of mine that he cites, which he calls my “latest” and which betrays my anti-Obama fanaticism, you will find that it begins with the following headline:
Carbon Chastity
The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008
Note the date: May 30, 2008. A year and a half ago. At the time, George Bush was president. Barack Obama hadn’t even won the Democratic nomination, let alone become president of the United States. The column has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama.
Sullivan’s entire ad hominem conclusion — that my views are animated by nothing but the basest, most corrupt partisan motives — turned out to be a complete invention based on his inability to read dates.
Krauthammer’s article continues here.
