The question remains. Since people of good will recoil at the race card, why are media, including conservatives, allowing Obama to use it as a sword and a shield?

When Obama campaigned with Oprah Winfrey in South Carolina, there was no mention of the white side of his family. Like Dorothy said to Toto, “I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

The Los Angeles Times took note that Obama talked about his white mother and white grandparents to a virtually white audience in Kansas where he was introduced by the white governor, Kathleen Sebelius, but the Times, which has endorsed Obama, didn’t mention the “race card”:

The candidate is not in South Carolina anymore, where African Americans helped him to victory in the primary on Saturday. When he talks inclusiveness in El Do-RAY-do (population 12,000, 94 percent white), he means something just a little bit different.

“Barack Obama has Midwestern values, values that we know about,” Sebelius said. “He got them from his grandparents and from his mom,” the Kansas branch of Obama’s multiracial family. (His mother was white; his father was a black Kenyan.)

I guess they were just playing the inoffensive geographic card.

The POW Card:

John McCain palms his POW card often and at the most irrelevant times, such as the Republican debate at the Reagan Library last week. Janet Hook of The Los Angeles Times asked McCain the following question about the economy:

Hook: “There's been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of leadership and management experience. What makes you more qualified than Mitt Romney, a successful CEO and businessman, to manage our economy?”

McCain: “Because I know how to lead. I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit. And I can hire lots of managers, but leadership is a quality that people look for. And I have the vision and the knowledge and the background to take on the transcendent issue of the 21st century, which is radical Islamic extremism. I've been involved in every single major national security crisis since -- in the last 20 years. I'm proud to have played a role in those, and I'm proud to have played a role in making sure that we didn't raise the white flag and surrender in Iraq, as the Democrats wanted us to do and we would have done if we had set timetables for a withdrawal. So, the fact is -- so the fact is that I have the qualifications and the knowledge and the background and the judgment. I don't need any on-the-job training. I had the great honor of serving this country in uniform for 22 years. I had the great honor of being inspired while I was in the prison camps of North Vietnam by the news of a governor and his wife who cared very much about those of us who were in captivity.

And when I came home, I was inspired by him, and I voted for him, and I supported him, and I was proud to be a leader in the Reagan revolution -- I mean, a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, as we fought these wars together with unshakable courage and principle. And I'm prepared to follow in his tradition and in his footsteps.

Hook checked and passed to Mitt Romney.

Most of us get it, and we don’t think it’s worth a plugged presidential nickel. Hillary’s a woman. Barack’s black and white. Mike’s a former Baptist preacher. Mitt’s a Mormon. John’s a war hero and former POW. Kudos to all, and get over it.

And thanks to Ron Paul for not playing your gynecology card.