Obama And The Democrats Overplay The 'Race Card'

America has been in the throes of an very competitive campaign for almost two years. For the first time in history an African American is leading a major party. Throughout the campaign Obama's supporters have tried to quash any legitimate questioning of their candidate. Anyone who raises real concerns about Obama's positions is pounced on with charges of racism. The offender is called a racist and their character called into question, while Obama's defenders gloss over the issue.

Obama has led this sham. Perhaps he is paranoid. He started off saying that Republicans would say he was 'different', and did not look like the other presidents on the dollars bills. He did this in an well choreographed way. Obama raised the race card, much the way people spray on "Off" prior to going outside in the summer.

The left has played the race card like a teenager plays a new CD. 'Joe the plumber' asks a question. The Democrats and the media set out to destroy him and call him a racist. Palin points out Obama's association with "white" domestic terrorist Ayers. She is an racist. I question his racist church and its racist theology, pointing out that he attended there twenty years, and I get called a racist.

America is used to Jack Murtha's moronic manner. Last week in an interview with the Post-Gazette's editorial board, "There's no question that Western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Barack Obama would win, he predicted, but not in a "runaway," due to racism.

After Mr. Murtha's brash set-up, Mr. Patrick's appeal to vote-as-racial-atonement was delivered Friday via the unnamed overseas visitors he meets regularly. They range from foreign businessmen and heads of state, and they are "very, very interested in Barack Obama's candidacy," he said in a Post-Gazette story. "Once, I asked one why, and his response was so beautiful. He said, 'We are watching to see if America is who she says she is.' " - Ruth Ann Dailey

The American ideal is to vote for racial identity rather than political ideas? And that's beautiful? That sounds like typical left-wing .

Which foreign nations are these, anxious to judge the American voters? The ones in Europe that keep their, Muslim minorities as second-class citizens in out of sight suburban ghettos? The ones whose leaders openly make outrageous anti-Semitic remarks? The ones who themselves have even fewer minorities in positions of power?The countries whose economies have been mired for years in the stagnation of cradle-to-grave socialism?

Other countries views of Americas political process is a moot point. The fact that we have an African American nominated in itself puts us ahead of them.

The best thing that could happen on Nov. 4 is for like-minded people to give him their votes, regardless of their race or his, and for people who embrace free-market, limited-government principles to vote for his opponent, regardless of their race or his.

That said, to some unknowable extent, Mr. Murtha's accusation is both true and lamentable. There are still racists living in the United States, and some of them even live in Western Pennsylvania, which happens to be a Democratic stronghold.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter, made the same claim about the entire state back in February. Also while chatting with the Post-Gazette editorial board, he said, "You've got conservative whites here ... who are not ready to vote for an African-American candidate." (Note the tiresome Democratic smear of equating racism with conservatism.)

Mr. Rendell's comments came two months before the primary, but Mr. Obama's remarks about bitter small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion exploded into public debate 10 days before the primary. Mrs. Clinton won Pennsylvania by a margin of 10 percent.

Were the Democrats who voted for her motivated by racism, or were they turned off by Mr. Obama's disdain for their lives and values? "Were they clinging to their guns and religion"? Or did they just prefer her prescription for the country's future?

The same questions will still apply on Election Day. Republicans have won nine of the 15 presidential races since the end of World War II. Candidates of either party usually win by very slim margins. That's a strong enough pattern to assert that Americans are pretty evenly divided ideologically, are in general a little more conservative than the Democratic Party and like to invigorate the body politic regularly with a tonic of something completely different.-Ruth Ann Dailey

The Democrats have hidden behind the race card so many times throughout the campaign, that they have devalued and exploited the term. It has been rendered as nothing more than background noise.