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.