Charles Krauthammer explains the significance of Barack Obama’s associations:

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association. But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

But while most of the chattering class is at a loss to understand why this matters, Krauthammer is not:

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with — let alone serve on two boards with — an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics? . . .Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs. He doesn’t share the Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’s views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.
. . .
Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

And perhaps, aside from crass political concerns, this is why conservatives are beside themselves as the revelations about Obama’s shady connections come forward and are blithely dismissed by the MSM rooting club. In the conservative worldview, to be judgmental and to make moral choices are central to living a decent life, let alone assuming the mantle of political leadership. Getting along or going along with evil (and make no mistake, Ayers and Dohrn were evil) or shedding one’s past when proven inconvenient is a red flag, a sign of moral vapidness. It is not a political stunt to raise these matters: it is a plea for ethical standards and seriousness.

Conservative concern may be overblown, but it is worthy of consideration. And it is therefore worth pondering what other plausible alternative explanation is there for Obama’s past behavior and his current slipperiness. If you can come up with one, you can rest easier that the Right’s concern is misplaced.