The Bill Ayers Smear

Here's a statement on Bill Ayers from a former Illinois Republican state representative who has known him for a long time, taken from an NPR story:

Discussing Ayers' rehabilitation as a member in good standing of the education policy-wonk community, former state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson said: "It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier ... It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."

As I've written elsewhere, former revolutionaries from the '60s, as they aged, mellowed out and went both toward conservative Republican and liberal Democrat politics. It seems though that the only ones still attacked for their youthful sins and crimes are the liberal Democrats. Is that because the Republicans 'saw the light' while the Democrats remain outside the pale?