Does the race card work?  There can be no doubt that it is played an awful lot these days.  In fact, in the age of the Obama, one could be forgiven for thinking that the left had discarded every other card in their deck.

But is it effective in its aim to cow those critical of a socialist policy that vacillates almost daily between comically inept and extremely dangerous?

Once, certainly, the charge of racist was something to be feared.  And those so accused knew they were for the pyre -- even as they frantically pleaded their innocence before self-appointed witchfinders general.

But now?  Just think of the reaction the last time a liberal talking head played the card.  Was there fear?  Or, instead, outright derision?

And do not make the mistake of thinking that such a response is the province of only the conservative commentariat.  Such sentiment is widely shared amongst everyday people, a significant percentage of whom voted for Obama the first time around.

Why is this the case?  Because not every person who makes up the 53% who voted Democrat in 2008 is the proverbial pie-eyed supporter.  Rather, there have been many from this number over the last four years who have held legitimate questions about actions taken by the president.  Questions for which they have been made to suffer a grievous assault upon their integrity.

As a strategy, it is certainly novel -- condemning as racist all those who disagree with your candidate.  Even if a not insubstantial percentage of these people actually voted for your guy the last time out.  But to date, that has been the approach the left has gone with.

But why engage in such patently self-defeating behavior?  Is it ideological psychosis which leaves these character assassins oblivious to the ramifications of their actions?  Or is there something more to it?

A perpetual claim of moral superiority has always been the stock-in-trade of the left.  Because of this, defenders of the Obama Socialist Agenda, when forced to deal with heavy criticism from a portion of their own base, find themselves very much between a rock and a hard place.

The moral high ground has already been achieved, after all.  That is considered an unarguable fact.  Therefore, those who criticize their black president must be racist.  For what other option is there?  The reasoning of it is perfectly elegant.  And irredeemably bankrupt.

The boon for Republicans this behavior has brought has been to  take the vast disparity between the left's stated beliefs and their actual practices and strip it bare for all the world to see.  For one cannot credibly state that he is for tolerance and freedom, while all the while acting in a manner wholly antithetical to these ends.

It is a phenomenon which stands as perhaps the greatest gift of the Obama years.  And the beauty of it is, it is something that liberals have visited entirely upon themselves.

It was not conservatives who demonized protesters who gathered peacefully and responsibly under the Tea Party banner -- denigrating them with all manner of racist motivations and gross sexual innuendo.  Nor was it conservatives who then beatified Occupy protesters, people who on nightly newscasts wallowed in self-entitlement and irresponsibility -- as so many of their number rioted and vandalized.

What conservatives have done, however, is call for an open debate on Democrat policies which they identify as naïve, obtuse, or exhibiting megalomania.

But of course, Obama can still win.  But for this to occur, America must stand up and show itself to be the predominantly racist nation that the left continually assures us it is.

For apart from avowed Socialists, only a racist who sets a lower standard of behavior for an African-American man and his champions could excuse the racial vilification that has been used to bludgeon down Obama's critics.

And only a racist, mitigating his expectations of a black man, could possibly forgive the litany of policy disasters that have fallen with the regularity of coffin lids across the time of his administration.

The United States stands as the world's greatest bastion of liberty and indelibly associated individualism.  It is perhaps far from the unbowed soldier it once was.  But nor has it yet been driven to its knees.  For it to be finally brought low by collectivism though, all that is needed is just enough racists to return the President for a second term.

Has the world ever seen such Orwellian irony?

Vaughan Starr is a freelance writer.  Professional inquiries may be directed to mrvstarr@gmail.com.