One more quick thought on Senator McCain’s (and the NY Times‘) response to the ad by the North Carolina GOP that used video of Reverend Jeremiah Wright shouting “G – D America”, which we wrote about yesterday –

A thought experiment for Senator McCain and the editors of the Times: Imagine a nearly identical ad, but with a single change – what if instead of using the clip of Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American rant, they had used a clip of one of William Ayers’ anti-American rants. Would Senator McCain, who recently called for Senator Obama to repudiate and apologize for Ayers, call that ad offensive and unacceptable? Would the NY Times editors call that ad bigoted and shameful? Would that ad be racist or divisive? If not, why not? What specifically is the difference? Those who cavalierly play the race card are the ones sowing division, and they should be held accountable.

Manipulative. Shameful. Race-baiting. Those are the only words to describe the NY Times editorial condemning the North Carolina GOP for running an ad calling Senator Barack Obama “too extreme” for North Carolina.

Of course the ad doesn’t say anything about race, but that fact isn’t enough to stop the Times editors from calling the ad race-baiting. The Times absurdly claims, “The assertion that Mr. Obama is ‘just too extreme for North Carolina’ is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state.”

But they don’t bother to explain how calling someone “extreme” has anything at all to do with race. If calling a black person “extreme” is race-baiting, then any criticism of a black person is race-baiting. Or as Michelle Malkin noted, the equation seems to be:

“Southern + Republican + video featuring radical leftists who happen to be black = RACISTRACISTRACISTRACISTDANGERWILLROBINSON!”

That seems to be it – Republicans are racist, they said something true yet critical of a non-white individual, therefore, the criticism is racist. End of proof.

It’s clear the Democrats want to make any criticism of their candidate unacceptable in polite society, and they’re going to throw down the race card at every opportunity, just more of their standard MO, to try to make that happen. It’s unfortunate and unwise for Senator McCain to try to curry favor with liberals and the DeMSM by playing into this strategy. He isn’t going to get more votes by adopting the negative liberal view of his own party.

The race-baiting in this campaign is coming, as usual, from the left, not from the right. Senator McCain will be able to defeat it only by condemning it, not by kowtowing to the race-baiters. It is right and good for Senator McCain to reach out to voters outside his own party, but he doesn’t need to trash his own party to do so. That isn’t a recipe for victory in the fall.

UPDATE: Here is an excellent column on Obama, Jeremiah Wight, and the NC GOP ad, from Peter Wehner at NRO, “Not Everything Is About Race“:

… the ad in question doesn’t mention race anywhere; rather, it includes a clip of Reverend Wright’s incendiary words. Wright happens to be black – but his race is not the reason he’s in the ad. His words are …

….

These kind of criticisms, un-anchored to any persuasive or substantive argument, are the kind that conservatives find discouraging and disturbing. The senior senator from Arizona could probably find more constructive things to do with his time than to help those on the Left brand conservatives as racists. The deeper damage, of course, will be that when real racism does emerge – and it does exist – the accusations will be largely dismissed.

What Dionne is doing, and what McCain is aiding Dionne in doing, is wrong and reckless. People who are troubled by what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. said – which is just about everyone who heard what Wright said – are not racists, and calling attention to what Wright said is not racism. To pretend that’s the case is an effort at intimidation, and I rather doubt it will work. The Wright issue won’t go away, nor should it.

Senator Barack Obama sure does have a low opinion of his fellow citizens, and we don’t just mean the ones he thinks are bitter, Bible-thumping gun nuts.

Via Yahoo News:

Democrat Barack Obama on Friday blamed high gasoline prices on Washington and a political establishment, including his rivals for the presidency, that he says hasn’t stood up to oil companies. Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted his vote for an energy bill she opposed and his campaign contributions from oil company executives.

“The candidates with the Washington experience – my opponents – are good people. They mean well, but they’ve been in Washington for a long time and even with all that experience they talk about, nothing has happened,” Obama said at a local gas station. “This country didn’t raise fuel efficiency standards for over 30 years.”

The result, the Illinois senator said, is that consumers are suffering.

See? Vehicles have been available for all of those 30 years that get high miles per gallon of gasoline, but Senator Obama apparently thinks Americans are too stupid to choose them if the government doesn’t step in and force them to. The fact other vehicles are also available that get lower miles per gallon is beside the point. If people want better fuel efficiency, they have the ability to get it right now. When American consumers choose more fuel efficient cars, the average fuel efficiency of cars actually on the roads will go up, without any government intervention whatsoever. It’s a sort of direct democracy – people vote for the fuel efficiency they want when they choose to buy a vehicle. But that kind of liberty is not what socialists like Obama want. They want to deny Americans free choice. (Whatever happened to a woman’s right to choose – an SUV?)

It tells us a lot about Senator Obama’s mindset that he seems to think everything is, or should be, controlled by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. But then this is they same guy that said in the last debate that he thinks the capital gains tax rate should be raised, even if it will result in lower revenues, in the name of “fairness”. So economics is obviously not his strong suit.