Is Obama getting off easy?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Jonah Goldberg writes today that a candidate named Barry O’Malley, running for President with Barack Obama’s record and level of experience, would get laughed off the national stage. Why has Obama succeeded where others would have disappeared long before the first primary? Identity politics, and it’s Republicans who have pulled their punches as a result:

Liberal Democrats have a long tradition of tarring opponents as the monolithic forces of hatred and prejudice while casting themselves as the enlightened proponents of peace, love and decency. And this election shows that tradition is alive and well.

Over the weekend, civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis of Georgia sold off another chunk of his reputation by coughing up some absurd partisan talking point about how the McCain-Palin campaign reminds him of that of Dixiecrat segregationist George Wallace. And, for the last week, a host of reporters — not just liberal pundits — have ominously fretted that the McCain campaign’s use of former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers as an issue is a racist ploy. The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut, for instance, wrote that Sarah Palin’s comment that Barack Obama was “palling around with terrorists” is “a turn of phrase that critics said was racially loaded.”

The most laughable evidence that McCain is sowing hatred stems from the shouts of “terrorist!” and “kill him!” from a few hothead buffoons at McCain rallies. Of course, rather than foment this sort of thing, McCain went out of his way to chastise his own supporters personally and publicly.

McCain has done nothing to fuel racism. Or, put another way, the McCain campaign has done as much to promote prejudice as the Obama campaign has to inflame the vile passions behind the “Abort Sarah Palin” bumper sticker, Madonna’s stage video lumping McCain in with Hitler, the eugenic snobbery aimed at Palin’s son with Down syndrome or the column in the Philadelphia Daily News that predicted a “race war” if McCain wins.