Opponents seize on "racially charged" Obama video

WASHINGTON (AP) - Conservatives on Tuesday used a speech President Barack Obama delivered as a candidate in 2007 to accuse him of using racially charged rhetoric.

"It contains some of the most divisive class warfare and racially charged rhetoric ever used by Barack Obama," said Fox News host Sean Hannity. Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson of The Daily Caller argued that the speech features "racial rhetoric designed to make people fearful." And The Drudge Report, a regular Obama critic, predicted the video would "ignite accusations of racism -- in both directions!"

At issue Tuesday, one day before the first presidential debate and as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney trails in polls, was a speech then-candidate Obama made to black clergy at Hampton University, a historically black school in Virginia. Media outlets including The Associated Press and Fox News, which broadcast portions of the video Tuesday, covered the remarks at the time.

Obama -- now the nation's first black president -- said in the speech that the Bush administration did nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatened to erupt in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Then a U.S. senator from Illinois, Obama also said the Bush administration "was colorblind in its incompetence."

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt quickly dismissed the criticism, accusing "Mitt Romney's allies" of recirculating video of a widely covered speech in "a transparent attempt to change the subject" from Romney's comments about 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes.

Romney's campaign did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The Republican previously distanced himself from a conservative group considering an advertising campaign featuring Obama's former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons stirred controversy in Obama's first campaign.