A Democratic Representative from Georgia, John Lewis, has compared John McCain and Sarah Palin to George Wallace. Governor George Wallace was a segregation proponent from Georgia. Rep Lewis, in comparing McCain and Palin to Wallace, is claiming that they are fanning the flames of hatred.

"What I am seeing reminds me of too much of another destructive period in American history," Lewis said in a statement released to FOX News. "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

Rest of the story here:  

The implication couldn’t be clearer, criticizing Barack Obama is racism.

The reality is that we better get used to this. I predicted early on that this would be the pattern. Towards the end if Obama was losing, or was under attack, his supporters will trot out the racism charge. It is an absolute gaurantee. He of course will stay above the fray, he has even come out and disagreed with Rep Lewis on this, but it’s out there.

In fact I will go even farther and say it is a planned strategy. Stand ins will cry racism and Obama will say “no, I don’t think he meant it that way”. Obama’s campaign knows, as well as I do, what the media is going to report. They won’t report the denial by Obama as much as they will report the charge of racism against McCain.

This happened after the last debate. Obama supporters raised a fuss over McCain’s “that one” remark. Somehow “that one” has now become a racist remark. The campaign let the issue stew awhile, let their supporters attack, let the media report on it. Then after a little while, Michelle Obama quitely went on Larry King and said she didn’t feel that McCain meant to be racist. This is a win-win for Obama. His supporters tar and feather McCain in the media, at the same time if they are attacked for raising a false call of racism, they can point to Michelle’s remarks on King.

The scary part is that if the phrase “that one” can be turned into charges of racism, what could McCain say that is ok?

There is a news story that has gotten more attention here in Michigan than nationally. Story here

The Detroit area Macomb County Republican chairman, James Carabelli, has been quoted by Michigan Messenger as saying “We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Mr. Carabelli and the Michigan Republican party deny he made the statement and have threatened a libel suit against the site if it does not print a retraction.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Party have filed a lawsuit to prevent the county from doing what they may or may not be planning to do.

I can’t attest to the merit of the suit, it has turned into a he said-she said affair with no real indication of who is telling the truth. The Michigan GOP and Macomb County have strongly and consistently denied the accusation and claim they couldn’t do it if they wanted to. The claim by the county is that the voter roll does not provide enough information to practically carry a plan like this through.

Further, I am not familiar with this publication. A quick scan of the headlines on the site make their slogan, “A Center For Independent Media” a little dubious. Following is a sample of the headlines this evening:

• Fight for the soul of Michigan’s highest court  (Beginning of article): “Arch-conservative Clifford Taylor…”
•  Obama condemns “shameless” McCain campaign
•  Lose your house, lose your vote
•  DOJ politicization hurt voters’ rights, has it hurt Michigan?
•  Rove tricks? McCain absentee ballots raise questions
•  1980’s savings and loan bailout haunts John McCain
•  Conservatives looking decidedly socialist as AIG and market flounder

Borderline tabloid and decidedly liberally slanted headlines like this do harm their credibility a bit and make it a little easier to believe they may have misquoted Mr. Carabelli.

Forgetting the accuracy of this upstanding publication for now, I have a different theory on why the lawsuit was filed in the first place.

It is no secret that Michigan’s economy is in the toilet. It has the highest unemployment rate in the country and is losing population so fast that by spring it may have fewer people than North Dakota. The problem with this for the Democratic party is that we are in the second term of a Democratic governor who inherited the state from a three term Republican governor that left the state in better shape. Further half of the legislature is controlled by the Democrats. Between them they have had some really idiotic and publicly embarrassing attempts to “fix” the economy in Michigan. Staying true to the Democratic ideals, these fixes have largely comprised of increased taxes, which is exactly what a state bleeding jobs needs to do.

One thing Obama does not need, in a tight race for a state that is very important to his presidential aspirations, is to have the public notice that the Dems have run our state into the ground.