Charges of Racism, past and present.

If I asked you to name a politician who has been accused “Hitlerite racism,” who would you name?

David Duke, perhaps?

Nope. (Hat tip, Kevin Rennie)

Try “Jimmy Carter.”

“Carter incensed Jackson during his 1976 presidential campaign when the former Georgia governor declared “there’s nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained” in a neighborhood. It was as jarring a phrase then as it is now, but Carter was in search of votes among the white ethnic urban Democratic primary voters hostile to government housing programs that brought racial integration.

Pressed to explain, Carter’s venomous piety nearly ended his campaign. According to Time magazine, “Carter’s face reddened with anger, and he began to sweat. Instead of softening his language, he spoke of housing policies in terms of ‘black intrusion,’ of ‘alien groups’ and of ‘a diametrically opposite kind of family.'”

Now, to read these words, I can see how “David Duke” would be a reasonable guess, however.

So, Jimmy Carter, thirty years ago, was explicitly racist in his rhetoric,  sort of a mid-nineties Al Sharpton in white face —  openly talking in terms of “black interlopers” and maintaining the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods.  Today, James has the gall to accuse simple opposition to the socializing of vast swaths of the US economy to be “racist.”

Were James Earl Carter even remotely correct in his assessment, I’d say that it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.  Too bad Carter’s compass is so badly turned around that any opposition to Obama’s policy efforts is now racist.

UPDATE (Jim): Thought this might be an appropriate place to revisit the pompous ex-President’s classic remarks from last week.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtfzMLS_-NU

Oh, and let’s not forget Michael Steele’s response on purely ideological grounds.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkpRDOA_xO4