GOP candidates assail president over N.Y. mosque comments

From state houses to state fairs yesterday, Republican incumbents and challengers unleashed an almost unified line of criticism against the president days after he forcefully defended the construction of a $100 million Islamic center two blocks from the site of the 2001 terror attacks.

Recalling the emotion of that deadly day, Republicans said that while they respect religious freedom, the president’s position was cold and academic, lacking compassion and empathy for the victims’ families.

“He is thinking like a lawyer and not like an American, making declarations without America’s best interest in mind,’’ said Andrew Harris, a Republican running for Congress in Maryland against first-term Democratic Representative Frank Kratovil.

That line — emerging as a boilerplate attack — forced the endangered Democrat to respond.

“I mean, it seems to me those are issues related to local zoning laws and so forth, and that’s a decision that they’re going to have to make, but I don’t see the federal government having any role in that,’’ Kratovil said.

In Ohio, where the president was headed today as part of a three-state political swing, Republican congressional candidate Jim Renacci took issue with Obama’s position and challenged his opponent, first-term Democrat John Boccieri, to do likewise.

“Just because we may have the right to do something, doesn’t necessarily make it right to do it,’’ Renacci said.

The Boccieri campaign and his congressional office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Republicans who weren’t on the ballot this year — but possibly looking ahead to challenging Obama in 2012 — sought to make it a political issue.

“Well I think it’s another example of him playing the role of law professor. . . . We can have a great debate about the legal arguments. But it’s not about that,’’ Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said in an interview Monday on Fox News.

Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was a professor at the University of Chicago law school from 1992 to 2004.

Obama isn’t worried about the furor unleashed by his comments, a spokesman said yesterday. He’s also not dismayed that the Senate’s top Democrat, majority leader Harry Reid, now opposes the idea, said deputy press secretary Bill Burton.

“This is an issue people are going to come to with strongly held convictions,’’ Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One, as Obama flew to an appearance in Seattle. “He’s happy our thriving democracy is continuing to produce vigorous debate.’’

— Associated Press

Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House Financial Services Committee, joined 41 other lawmakers in urging “no further delay’’ on nominating Warren, 61, as the bureau’s first leader in a letter to Obama. “You have an opportunity to appoint to head this body a true visionary — not the usual Washington practice of a careerist,’’ the House Democrats wrote in the letter released yesterday by New York Representative Carolyn Maloney.

Warren, who leads the congressional panel overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is on Obama’s short list of candidates. Her consumer advocacy and criticism of TARP recipients have led financial industry groups and congressional Republicans to question whether she would treat companies fairly as leader of the new agency.

— Bloomberg News

The association helps elect Republican gubernatorial candidates. Government filings show that it raised more than $19 million during the second quarter, compared with about $9 million in the first quarter.

The parent company of Fox News, News America Inc., is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp.

The Democratic Governors Association reported raising $9 million in the second quarter.

— Associated Press