The Obama campaign’s race-card gambit

Inflaming tensions part of re-election strategy


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/23/the-obama-campaigns-race-card-gambit/


While Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s “back in chains” remark in front of a largely black audience on Aug. 14 definitely can be considered race-baiting, based on the Obama administration’s reaction, it was more an off-the-cuff embarrassment than part of a calculated effort to rile black Americans and engender fear.

Not that there isn’t an effort on the part of the Obama campaign to do so. There most certainly is, and we can count on it to intensify as this presidential campaign wears on. I asserted some time ago that the 2012 presidential race would be “the race card on steroids,” but not necessarily through Mr. Obama’s campaign demonizing his opponent via accusations of racism. A photograph of Mitt Romney’s father, George, participating in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe, Mich., in 1963 already has become practically iconic in conservative circles and no doubt will be at the ready should race come into play against candidate Mitt Romney.

The reason Camp Obama will continue to foment racial discord is, quite simply, the reason it has done so since 2008. The radical elements with whom President Obama was politically aligned before seeking the presidency were aware of the latitude they likely would enjoy were Mr. Obama to become president. This included black nationalist factions such as the New Black Panther Party, with whom he demonstrated in 2007, as well as the Nation of Islam. Their activities since Mr. Obama was inaugurated bear witness to this fact.

The significance of Mr. Obama keeping such bedfellows cannot be understated. This differs from the case of Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who is merely an America-damning racist. It has been documented that the Weather Underground, which Mr. Obama’s comrade William Ayers helped found, once advocated killing off 25 million Americans in order to make its point to the remaining 200 million. Outfits like the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) literally view whites and Jews as manifestly evil, if not subhuman, and the NBPP is calling for armed insurrection and the genocide of whites right now.

Analysts and even news junkies are aware that extemporaneous exposition is not Mr. Obama’s strong suit. From Cambridge, Mass., police having “acted stupidly” when they arrested his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, in 2009 to Mr. Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark this summer, he’s demonstrated a proclivity for getting into trouble when he goes off the teleprompter.

Even on a teleprompter, he has sallied into areas touching on race that tested the bounds of presidential decorum. Commenting on the highly incendiary Trayvon Martin shooting in March, Mr. Obama stated that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.” This obviously was calculated to elicit an emotional response. Add to this the fact that his Justice Department refused to act on or even respond to the NBPP placing a $10,000 bounty on the head of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who shot Trayvon, or their mobilizing a vigilante army in an attempt to capture Mr. Zimmerman. Mr. Obama’s refusal to disavow this behavior is tantamount to granting a license for it.

For this and other reasons (such as Mr. Obama’s admitted strategy of operating “under the radar”) look for the fires of race to be stoked by Obama surrogates rather than by him or his operatives. Direct attacks by the Obama campaign against Mr. Romney on the basis of race are unlikely but not out of the realm of possibility. Ultimately, it may be easy — though dishonest — for the president to disown the rhetoric of the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, the New Black Panther Party and others, but his sphere clearly encompasses them in the same manner it does former green energy czar Van Jones, for example, who has been a key adviser to the Occupy movement. There is no denying that this organization in particular has been disruptive as well as violent and that Mr. Jones and the administration still have a working relationship.

Like Mr. Jones and his Rebuild the Dream organization, the racially focused nodes of Mr. Obama’s network all operate within the Marxist modality of transference, provoking fear and resentment as well as fomenting class warfare. Consequently, they do not necessarily have to be coordinated any more than were the original Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground. While there may indeed be synchronization of some contemporary black radicals and career activists (such as the ever-popular Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) by the administration, their essential marching orders were received a long time ago.

Whether this methodology is intended by the administration to bring about wholesale civil unrest (as some suggest) or simply to increase the likelihood of Mr. Obama’s re-election remains to be seen. Suffice it to say that the strategy is substantially more refined than turning Mr. Biden loose every few weeks.



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