The race card president

The race card president

Sherman Frederick
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Oct. 2, 2011

We'll probably never purge society of racial stupidity. Holding it to a minimum, however, remains a fine American goal.

It's hard to marginalize the race-card mentality, however, when the country's first black president and his supporters wield it like a splitting ax.

That track record on this is crystal clear. In 2008, when campaigning in Missouri, Sen. Barack Obama set the stage for his national run by saying his opponent, Sen. John McCain, would seek to "scare" voters because Obama didn't look like past presidents and had a "funny name."

You don't need the imagination of Dr. Seuss to see that race card.

Those with no imagination (or those who won't see) may wish to contemplate comments by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Racebait, TX. In the recent debt ceiling debate, Rep. Jackson said: "I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that only this president, only this president, only this one, has received the kind of attacks and disagreements and inability to work. Only this one."

And just in case you didn't get it, she added: "Read between the lines."

We get it, Sheila. If you won't give President Obama more money to spend, you're a racist.

Crew Obama implements racial strategy in cooperation with the ideologically aligned "white guilt" media to inoculate the president from policy criticism. The Tea Party movement, for example, receives a double dose of the racial scorn because it poses a new and powerful threat to Obama policies.

I know this, in part, because when the Tea Party held rallies in Nevada, I followed on Twitter a couple of the reporters who covered the event. One reporter, a politically liberal sort, filed numerous derisive Tweets on his way to the rally on a Tea Party bus. He made fun of people's weight, their skin color and even fantasized that the bus load of "Tea Baggers" might soon break out in anti-Semitic song.

Of course, none of it happened in real life, but it gives you the mind-set of an all too typical reporter. (As an aside, there are good reporters who can overcome their own biases, but not enough.)

The advent of Texas Gov. Rick Perry as a contender for the GOP nomination for president earned him a race card dealt from the bottom of the deck.

Whispers of him being a "Southern white racist" echoed between Obama re-election operatives and the liberal media. And it didn't take long for the shameless MSNBC to find a way to get it out in the open.

Host Ed Schultz ran a clip of Perry speaking in Iowa about "that big black cloud that hangs over America -- that debt that is so monstrous." Schultz, however, cut the sound bite off to make it say "that big black cloud that hangs over America." He then said, "that black cloud that Perry is talking about is President Barack Obama."

Schultz later said he regretted "the error." Damage done.

Another GOP hopeful, Herman Cain, put his finger on the problem. In his new book, "This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House," he writes, "Whenever President Obama is criticized over policy mistakes, his surrogates tend to play the race card, as if there's supposed to be something inherently morally wrong in such criticism."

While Cain doesn't go so far as to blame President Obama personally for these racial attacks, many do. And that includes none other than former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton felt the sting of the Obama race card strategy just after the 2008 South Carolina primary, in which Obama beat Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton tried to downplay the significance of the Obama win by pointing out that South Carolina had also voted for Jesse Jackson. Crew Obama called Clinton out for a racial foul.

"I think that they played the race card on me," said Bill Clinton. "And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along."

Look, you can love or hate the policies of President Obama. That's what makes America grand. But, please, don't pretend Barack Obama hasn't become "The Race Card President."

Look for it early and often in 2012.