Apparently they do not think so.

I don’t have to replay all the past drops by the Obama campaign and all the other various uses.  Prime examples are as in the recent events file.

One was when Palin took the gloves off and attacked Obama over his association to unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. 

As this RNC faq sheet shows, he did have a close association, and Ayers has never recanted his terrorism.

And almost immediately, the race card was dropped on her.  Not by Obama, ironically, but by the Associated Press¹:

Analysis: Palin’s words carry racial tinge

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign. 
 
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

…

“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain’s ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”

Her reference to Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

…

The larger purpose behind Palin’s broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama’s associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.

For the McCain campaign, that makes Obama’s ties to Ayers as well as convicted felon Antoin “Tony” Rezko and the controversial minister Jeremiah Wright ripe for renewed criticism. And Palin brings a fresh voice to the argument.

…

“The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There’s plenty of time in the campaign,” said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. “I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with.”

So, where is the racism?

Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Of course this is all inadvertent right?  Nope.  Not only is it deliberate, according to the AP, but it serves the McCain campaign well:

Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.

What nonsense.  That the media has jumped onto Obama’s race bating wagon is just more evidence they are in the tank for him.

But it didn’t end there.  Now Barney “basement brothel” Frank has jumped onto the wagon, and drop the card on his own.  The target?  Anyone who dares criticize the Democrats for the financial mess we are in.  Via Hot Air²:

Barney Frank’s latest defense of Congress over the financial meltdown could be predicted based on the success of Barack Obama’s campaign in using the same defense. According to Rep. Frank, any attempt to pin the blame for the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the activities of both, as well as Congressional policy that fueled it, is now officially racist. Frank says conservatives want to blame minorities for the collapse:

Frank charged that conservatives aim to shift blame for the market meltdown away from Wall Street and toward minority-lending laws like the federal Community Reinvestment Act.

“The bizarre notion that the Community Reinvestment Act . . . somehow is the cause of the whole problem, (conservatives) don’t mind that,” the lawmaker said. “They’re aware that the affordable-housing goals of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and) the Community Reinvestment Act (aim to help) poor people. And let’s be honest, the fact that some poor people are black doesn’t hurt either from their standpoint.”

Let’s keep score. Criticizing Obama means we’re racists. Criticizing Congress means we’re racists. Getting angry at Congress for pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into buying bad loans and infecting the entire financial system with essentially fraudulent paper — at a cost of up to $700 billion in taxpayer money and potentially trillions in lost investments — means we’re racists.

I ate a hamburger for dinner tonight.  So far that is not racist, but I am waiting for it…

Captain Ed does straighten out a few facts too…

The CRA was only a small part of the cause of the collapse. It affected loans only at the margins. The Clinton administration opted for more aggressive enforcement, and “community organizers” like ACORN used that to file nuisance complaints that could keep banks from merging and acquiring other banks. That may have pushed lenders into lowering standards on a handful of loans, but only to enough of an extent to avoid government sanctions.

In that sense, the CRA is a bit of a red herring. The real cause of the collapse was the Congressional push for Fannie and Freddie to support subprime lending by purchasing the paper from lenders, which is related to the same policies that generated the CRA but isn’t the CRA itself. Lenders make money one of two ways: keeping the paper themselves and getting the interest over the term of the loan, or selling the paper to someone else for a guaranteed short-term profit. When Fannie and Freddie began buying all of this paper, they created a huge demand for subprime loans — and lenders responded by offering easy money to almost anyone who applied. They threw out income requirements and equity thresholds (such as down payments) and generated tremendous short-term profits for themselves … while Fannie and Freddie assumed all the long-term risk.

Had the risk remained at Fannie and Freddie, the problem would never have gone beyond their collapse. Unfortunately, Congress also pushed the GSEs to securitize the debt in order to spread the risk. Investors considered those mortgage-backed securities a safe bet, backed by the US government. That’s the direct cause of the financial collapse, along with the collapse of housing prices that resulted from the sudden deflation of demand.

Congress — and specifically Frank himself — had plenty of warning that this would happen. The anger generated from that information has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the breach of trust between Congress and its constituents. Frank, Chris Dodd, and others like Lacy Clay and Maxine Waters tried the racist meme out on regulators who tried to warn Congress of the pending collapse. They have to smear their critics. They certainly can’t admit that Congress failed spectacularly. Racism is the last refuge of scoundrels in 2008, and not surprisingly, we find most of those scoundrels in the Democratic Party.

So Barney Frank is playing a clever game with his accusation.  By countering attacks with the race card he hopes to distract form the real issue, which is that Congress in forcing all these risky loans destabilized the market and contributed to this collapse.

Sister Toldjah came to the same conclusion³:

In case there’s anyone out there still wondering why it’s so difficult to have a civil, frank (no pun intended) discussions in this country anymore, Frank has just demonstrated why. He brings up race in this issue because he doesn’t want to have a discussion about the root causes of this problem - or at least not a discussion that would include his and his party’s significant role in this economic crisis. It’s an attempt to set the parameters for the debate by cutting it off at the knees. I hope Republicans on the Hill, for once, do not fall for it.

Congress made its own bed.  Now it is trying to lie and buy its way out of it.  I hope we do  not let them.

And when the bogus bailout fails, I am sure they will blame that on racism too.

I close with a video someone sent me.  It is a bit harsh and takes some cheap shots, but pay attention to the facts.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, Cao’s Blog, NN&V, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, , third world county, Faultline USA, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081005/ap_on_el_pr/palin_s_words_analysis_1 [back]
2. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/06/frank-criticism-of-congress-is-now-racist-too/ [back]
3. http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2008/10/06/barney-frank-plays-the-race-card-surprise/ [back]

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