With Democrat fears of a November red wave growing, and with crime ranking as a top issue for voters as they prepare to head to the polls, it was only a matter of time before the MSM rushed to their rescue by trotting out the tiresome, predictable race card in the 11th hour.

As evidence, the New York Times published a piece Tuesday in which they proclaimed in so many words that Republicans who had previously tried to hide their supposed racism no longer cared what people thought, and were openly flaunting it in crime-based ads that targeted Democrats in battleground parts of the country:

Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for “quotas.”

If the intervening decades saw such tactics become harder to defend, the rise of Donald J. Trump shattered taboos, as he spoke of “rapist” immigrants and “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean. But while Republicans quietly stood by advertising that Democrats called racist in 2018, this year, they have responded with defiance, saying they see nothing untoward in their imagery and nothing to apologize for.

As “evidence,” the Times pointed to, among other things, an NRSC ad against Wisconsin Democrat Senate nominee Mandela Barnes, who is soft on crime, and a Club for Growth ad against North Carolina Democrat Senate nominee Cheri Beasley, who is also soft on crime.

Both Democrats are black and their Republican opponents – Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Ted Budd respectively – are white. I linked the ads above so readers themselves could draw their own conclusions.

What I was pleasantly surprised to see in the piece was the response from NRSC spoxdude Chris Hartline, who was having none of what the snoozepaper of record was trying to pass off as factual:

“This is stupid, but not surprising,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Committee, whose ads in North Carolina and Wisconsin have prompted accusations of racism. “We’re using their own words and their own records. If they don’t like it, they should invent a time machine, go back in time and not embrace dumb-ass ideas that voters are rejecting.”

The sounds of a mic dropping could be heard off in the distance.

To their credit, Club for Growth responded accordingly as well, noting that it was par for the course that Democrats were relying on the mainstream press to rescue them from their ugly records:

“Democrats across the country are getting called out for their soft-on-crime policies,” said the group’s president, former Representative David McIntosh. “Now that their poor decisions have caught up with them, they’re relying on the liberal media to call criticisms of their politically inconvenient record racist, and it won’t work.”

In my opinion, these should be the default responses going forward from GOP groups when the media unfairly goes the raaacism route (which is often).

The facts are what they are, and the records of the Democrats that are under attack for their crime stances and statements are fair game for scrutiny, and no amount of racial flamethrowing from The Usual Suspects in the media is going to change that.

Not only that, but after how the media and Democrats portrayed Mitt Romney of all people – perhaps the most milquetoast GOP presidential nominee Republicans have picked in recent memory – as a racist who then-Vice President Joe Biden claimed was gonna put black people “back in chains,” few actually take their accusations of racism against Republicans seriously anymore.

Do racist Republicans exist? Yes. Do racist Democrats exist? Yes. And they should be called out when the situation warrants it. But playing the race card purely for politics’ sake just because you’re desperate to help your team win an election is not only shameful; it also hurts actual victims of racism, making it harder for them to be believed.

Calling out someone running for higher office over their poor track record on crime issues is not racism, no matter what the colors are of those running in the race. This should be considered an irrefutable fact, but the New York Times is nothing if not predictable, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see them doing their thing this close to Election Day.

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