Via Ed Morrissey, watch as Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee tries to defend “refundable” tax credits to people who pay no taxes as not being welfare because it’s limited to non-taxpayers who meet a “work requirement” – and then inexplicably snap at McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin that the McCain health care plan also includes refundable health care credits, concluding “Is that socialist? Are you a Muslim?”

So update your “red is the new black” racism-decoder rings, because the Obama campaign now intends to argue that refundability=socialist=Muslim. Or you can just cut to the core of their argument: everything is off limits.

What is funny is the sheer desperation of this attack – it’s the sort of thing frustrated campaigns say when they are on the ropes. Which leads to one of two possible conclusions:

(1) The Obama camp, despite good polls and outward confidence, thinks it’s losing and is scared.

(2) The Obama camp is confident of victory but will nonetheless resort to cheap accusations of racism even when challenged on the most technical points, just out of habit and because it’s easier than arguing in good faith.

Pick one, you can’t pick neither.@ – Goolsbee is a living reminder that Obama never really gets rid of people who embarrass him, he just hides them a while until the coast is clear.

@@ – Mickey Kaus has explained how bogus, toothless ‘work requirements’ were an old dodge by opponents of welfare reform…hey, guess who was one of those in 1996? Barack Obama!

@@@ – Which are intended to replace the current tax subsidy for employer-provided health care. Funny how the Obama camp will attack removal of the tax subsidy as a tax hike and attack the refundable credit as a giveaway rather than admit that the two are linked – the point of the proposal is to shift people into the individual market and make health care more portable and less tied to your job.