Three Political Columnists I Admire Pay Tribute To the Late, Great Charles Krauthammer

UPDATE:  GET WOKE TO THE OUTRAGE SCAM

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I WONDERED WHY I HADN'T SEEN CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON FOX NEWS LATELY and realized I missed him. Where was he anyway? Then the sad news came recently that he was gravely ill and had only days to live.  A pang of sadness settled over me as I contemplated the loss of a truly great conservative political commentator at a time of the most irrational, mean spirited, shallow political insanity from the left that our country has ever lived through.

Krauthammer was a man I admired and respected on many levels. He will be missed by many.

Two of my favorite columnists and astute political observers have paid tribute to Krauthammer today. I link to them as I send sympathy and good wishes to Krauthammer's family, colleagues and many followers:

First Roger L Simon writes at PJMedia  America Lost Its Greatest Political Commentator In Krauthammer:

When you call someone the greatest at anything, you risk being accused of foolishness or worse; but it's safe to say that Charles Krauthammer, who passed away Thursday, was the greatest political commentator of our time.

I write this not just because he won the Pulitzer for commentary as a conservative, a near Herculean task.  And I say this even though I sometimes  disagreed with him, especially lately. Whom do we not disagree with at one time or another -- even ourselves?

I write this because Krauthammer was the gold standard of columnists, the most incisive mind in political journalism augmented by the most elegant and precise prose. For much of his life, no one was even close.  In recent years, others have stepped forward as Charles had, as happens after many years in the limelight, more difficulty wrapping his mind around contemporary events.  But as we now know, he was desperately ill...

Then,  Don Surber writes Charles Krauthammer,  RIP: 

He could have given up upon paralysis from an accident in medical school, but Charles Krauthammer did not give in to self-pity. He worked and graduated -- from Harvard Medical School.

He distinguished himself as a psychiatrist, and as a columnist he won a Pulitzer.

I included him in "Trump the Press" because he was oh so wrong oh so often.

But on December 31, 2015, he made amends.

From the book:

On New Year’s Eve, Krauthammer disclosed his winner of year, a choice that Ed Henry said surprised him.

“Well, you should be, but you should also remember that I’m a straight shooter. The obvious political winner in the United States this year is Donald Trump. The most astonishing, unexpected political rise in recent American political history. I would say with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn becoming the leader of the Labour Party, you know, a board-certified communist, the most unlikely. And, you know, I never let feelings get in the way of my ironclad judgment. Although I would say that the thing that probably tipped me over is when Trump, after a lot of hesitation, came out against the killing of journalists. That’s what sealed the deal for me,” Krauthammer said....

In addition,  Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner pens The Irreplaceable Charles Krauthammer::

The 800-word column format presents a challenge to writers, who often struggle to make a broader point and provide enough evidence to back it up, without going into excessive detail. Krauthammer was a master of the format. 

Read through his columns, and they weren’t typically filled with fancy prose or lengthy Latin phrases. Instead, his intelligence came through in the clarity of his thought and his ability to work through issues with reason using just enough supporting evidence.

His column ran every Friday, and while the rest of us rushed to weigh in on the ongoing controversies in Washington that consumed any given week, he managed to write something that took a bigger picture view, simultaneously seeming obvious yet fresh. For many conservatives, his columns often expressed ideas that were kind of floating around in their minds, but that they couldn’t quite articulate as clearly. He coined the term the ”Reagan Doctrine” to describe President Ronald Reagan’s strategy to win the Cold War, and “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to diagnose the hysterical way that opponents reacted to President George W. Bush.

Under President Barack Obama, Krauthammer set the standard for substantive criticism that was harsh yet steered clear of the bile and conspiratorial thinking that tempted some conservative pundits. Whether the issue was Obamacare, the disastrous Iran deal, executive overreach, or his parting shot toward Israel at the U.N., Krauthammer offered blistering yet fair critiques of Obama’s presidency.
Krauthammer made no secret of his disapproval of President Trump and fretted about the awful choice in the 2016 election, yet in his final column written last year, he expressed relief that the guardrails of democracy seemed to be keeping Trump’s worst impulses in check. 

Perhaps above all, Krauthammer managed to convey a sense of moral clarity, something that was on full display whenever he wrote about Israel, and was also demonstrated in a powerful 2004 column in which he grappled with the issue of stem cell research and where to draw the line on medical experimentation given the “competing human values” of searching for cures and respecting life.
“When I was 22 and a first-year medical student, I suffered a spinal-cord injury,” he wrote. “I have not walked in 32 years. I would be delighted to do so again. But not at any price. I think it is more important to bequeath to my son a world that retains a moral compass…”

Hope you've read  these tributes in full. If not, it's well worth your time.