"Why is it suddenly racist to treat Obama just like the four white guys who preceded him?"

Asks Jonah Goldberg, recounting the history of Republican attacks on Democratic presidential candidates:

According to the liberal history books, in 1988 the GOP cast Michael Dukakis as too elitist, cosmopolitan and not American enough. In 1992, it ran a similar attack against Bill Clinton -- remember the hullabaloo about draft dodging and that trip to Russia? In 2000, ditto with Al Gore, though the emphasis was less on foreignness and more on extraterrestrialness. And in 2004, there was John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. national security.

Fighting charges of racism with the we're-boringly-predicatable defense.

Even the defense is old, old, old. Think of all those people who rely on the ancient quip "I don't hate [black people/women/whatever], I hate everybody."