Barack Obama as George Wallace

For those who don't remember, or for those who never knew, there were two George Wallaces who ran Alabama state government for two decades and ran for president in three national elections. There was the old George Wallace and the new George Wallace.

The old George Wallace defined himself early on in 1963 at his first inauguration: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Then there was the new George Wallace, who felt that the attempt on his life was "a message from God" to specifically "set me straight." He morphed into a racial liberal unlike any political transformation in the history of American politics. The new Wallace proceeded to hire more blacks into high levels of state government. He made sure that state grants were awarded to urban and rural areas where blacks predominated. And, in his last run for governor in 1983, Wallace garnered 63 percent of Alabama's black vote.

Fast forward 25 years and America is witnessing a black candidate for president who is playing the race card with increasing frequency and intensity, putting his opponents on the defensive for words and statements they never made and would never dream of making in their wildest political imaginations.

In a perverse reversal of history, Barack Obama is becoming a very vocal racist in the worst tradition of the old George Wallace.

I saw it happen early in the campaign on March 4, 2007, when Obama traveled to Alabama to deliver his defining Selma stage play at Brown's AME Chapel. He told the congregation that his father was a "boy" for the British, when quite the opposite was true.

Then he lashed out, "I'm in Washington. I see what's going on. I see those powers and principalities have snuck back in there" referring to rich, powerful lobbyists. It was at that moment, as I watched him grip the lectern, that I saw the reincarnation of the old George Wallace as a black man stoking the same racial fears and class warfare animosity.

As former Newsweek reporter Stephan Lesher once wrote about Wallace's speech pattern, "He moved to his finale, his coup de grace, by pointing to the real villains – those with enough money, privilege and power to block his populist programs."

The old racist George Wallace that Obama is now emulating was last seen in 1970 when Wallace faced the tightest election ever in his non-stop runs for governor of Alabama, this time against incumbent Gov. Albert Brewer.

Wallace did not associate himself with the Klan, but he did not discourage Klan votes. Obama does not associate himself with America's top two racists, Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam and Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panthers, but he does not discourage their votes.

In 1970, an unsigned letter circulated throughout Alabama claiming that Gov. Brewer was homosexual. Wallace himself frequently referred to Brewer as "sissy-britches." Obama played the same sexual orientation card in reverse, calling conservative black pastors "homophobic."

Obama supporter and Hollywood mouthpiece Sarah Bernhard said that if VP candidate Sarah Palin comes to Manhattan, she will be gang-raped by Bernhard's "big black brothers." Wallace was good at this sick sexual demagoguery, too. During the 1970 race, an Alabama radio station in Anniston played a 30-second ad: "Suppose your wife is driving home at eleven o'clock at night. She is stopped by a highway patrolman. He turns out to be black. Think about it. Elect George C. Wallace."

Obama is now accumulating and playing more race cards than Wallace could have ever dreamed of doing in 1970. Obama began turning up the heat against his fellow African-Americans during the primary when reports surfaced of "Obama operatives" threatening prominent African-Americans to switch their allegiance from Hillary to Obama.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said the "verbal bludgeoning" reminded him of racist "1950s-style Missouri politics." Author Tavis Smiley was bombarded with the coordinated bullet-point mantra of "hater, sell-out, traitor" to the race.

Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Hillary's co-chairwoman, was receiving the most hideous phone calls of her life, and each time she changed her phone number, "they" found her again and again. Five days before the Denver Convention, Jones suffered a massive brain aneurysm and died at Huron Hospital in Cleveland.

As the Hollywood porn-thug rapper P. Diddy would proclaim, "Obama or Die!" Literally.

During this six-month period of harassing black leaders, Obama never issued a statement condemning the actions of the grass-root "surrogates." George Wallace never condemned the actions of the Klan in 1970.

August and September would reveal Obama to be an old Wallace bigot at his worst. Obama supporter Michael Dukakis called any criticism of Obama adviser and defrocked Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines as "racist." Obama's camp concurred with silence.

New York Gov. David Patterson denounced any reference of "community organizer" to describe Obama's early Chicago resume as "code" for "black." Again, Obama's campaign concurred in mock denial.

Wallace was good at that, too. As Lesher noted, "With breathtaking gall, Wallace exhibited his uncanny ability to inject racism into the campaign by denying it." Obama doesn't even try to deny it. "Theyr'e going to try to make you scared of me. You know, he doesn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar bill," and "Did I mention he's black?"

Barack Obama is now running the most blatantly racist campaign in American presidential campaign history, far outpacing the veiled racism Wallace crafted in his runs for president in 1964 and 1968.

With one of the tightest presidential races of recent years, the Obama campaign is now pulling a Turnipseed. No, not the garden variety. Tom Turnipseed was Wallace's gubernatorial campaign manager in 1970; the David Axelrod of his day. "We all knew what Wallace had to do: promise them the moon and holler 'nigger.'"

And that is exactly what Barack Obama is doing, with the full guidance of campaign strategist David Axelrod.