Race is run

The Repugnuicants have figured out a way to play the race card in the presidential race without appearing to play the race card.

They accuse Barack Obama of playing the race card.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,’’ Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

It's a sneaky strategy, but it likely isn't gonna work, because it's a bit obvious on whose side the truth lies.

Mr. Davis was alluding to comments that Mr. Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone, and negative ads that have been coming his way from the McCain campaign in recent days.

“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,’’ Mr. Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., in remarks that he echoed throughout the day. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.’’

It's the typical Repubnicant smear tactic. Just another way of swiftboating when the truth isn't in your favor.

Mr. Obama has made similar statements about the lines of attack against him before, and was even more direct last month when he said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’’

The McCain campaign’s decision to make the charge now that Mr. Obama was playing the “race card” comes as it has adopted a far more aggressive, negative posture towards Mr. Obama in recent days, trying to tar him as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency with a series of statements by Mr. McCain and a series of negative ads – some of which have been condemned as misleading.

Playing dirty's nothing new. Repugnicants have been doing it for years. Decades.

But then again, when your candidate is John McSame, promising four (8?) more years of the same corrupt Republican administration that has placed this country in the quagmire it's in, what choice do they have?

Sometimes the shortest path is through the mud.

And so it goes.