Racy Politics

The editors of National Review are one of the many voices that have overcome their fear of being labeled “racist” by the race baiters on the Left and in the Obama campaign, but I repeat myself.

By accusing McCain of racism by showing pictures of two white women who are famous for being famous, the Obama campaign and their water carriers in the MSM have not just jumped the shark, they have made themselves ridiculous.

But we suspect the race card will resurface, played by Obama’s supporters if not by the candidate himself. For them, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. Say that he is presumptuous, and they will accuse you of calling him an “uppity black man” — as though the fact that racists have called all confident black men arrogant means that it is automatically wrong to notice the trait in any of them. His ties to the Rev. Wright? Off limits. His wife’s provocative remarks? Now you’re slandering a black woman: You’re racist and probably sexist, too. All of these paranoid interpretations of normal political back-and-forth follow naturally from the premise that there can be no legitimate reason to resist the One.

The culture that has congealed around Obama wants to make voting for McCain a sign of bad taste at best, racism at worst. It is an electoral form of the political correctness that has soured so many people on the campus Left. McCain should resist this stultifying orthodoxy every time it appears, with brio and without remorse.

Up to now, the Left has been successful at silencing the white community with this false charge of racism. But no more. Now no matter how stridently the race baiters like Bob Herbert shouts, his outlandish assaults on reason simple make him ridiculous. He mistakes the victory monument that Obama chose as the site of his Berlin speech as the leaning tower of Pisa and claims McCain used the Washington Monument as a phallic symbol. You can’t make this stuff up.

The tide has turned against the race hustlers for two reasons: first, they have over-reached to a point where even the most credulous understand that they are being lied to. Second, a consensus is forming that America is not an irredeemably racist country. Polls show that not only do most whites reject the view that most Americans are racists, Blacks are evenly divided!

From Rasmussen:

Overall, just 22% of voters believe that most Americans are racist. That view is shared by 32% of Democrats, 20% of unaffiliated voters and 12% of Republicans. African-American voters are evenly divided on the question.

America has become a post racial society no matter how loudly the aging race baiters stamp their feet. And no, there are not 25 reasons why you are a racist if you don’t vote for Obama.

UPDATE: Powerline's Paul Mirengoff Obama removes his mask

It seems clear, therefore, that the race card has become a permanent part of Obama's hand, a wild card to be played whenever the spirit, or the circumstances, so moves him

Keep in mind that race and racial politics have been a part of Obama's life forever. It was his obsession as a youth. It's what made him in college and beyond. It's the root of his political rise in Chicago; it's the reason he joined Wright's racist church; it's the feature that got him his big break at the Democrat's last convention and it's the card that trumped Hillary's Ace in the battle for the nomination in a party practically built on racial spoils. He can no more disown racial politics than he can disown his "typically white" racist grandmother or his “Spiritual Mentor" the Rev. Wright..

And James Taranto in the WSJ remarks on the Spears/Hilton video:

First of all, the notion that the McCain ad plays to stereotypes of black men as sexual predators is far-fetched. The invidious old stereotype has to do with black men as a threat to white feminine innocence, and it is hard to imagine two less innocent symbols than Hilton and Spears.

The notion that Obama was not making a racial appeal is preposterous as well. Are we to believe that when he said he doesn't "look like" the presidents on money, he meant that he lacks a wig and a beard? That's certainly not what President Clinton had in mind when he said he wanted a cabinet that "looks like America." Besides, Obama has made essentially the same appeal in the past in an explicitly racial way.

Why yes, that’s what keeps us bitter clingers up at night: visions of Obama gamboling with the Virgin Hilton lit by an eerie green light. On second thought that could be worth money, perhaps Obama’s next big haul.