Even leaving Willie Horton aside, Cohen, in every instance, charges racism on the part of those who do not vote for Obama.

First he says:

In Mississippi, [HRC] took 70 percent of the white vote while Obama got 92 percent of the black vote -- about as stark a racial split as you're likely to find. (So who were more racist, Mr. Cohen, black voters or white?)

Then this:

Forty years to the month after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. [the numbers] suggest the durability of prejudice and the enduring centrality of race in American life.

He goes for the hat trick with his ending:

But if the upcoming Pennsylvania primary simply echoes earlier racial
divisions, Obama has to give yet another speech -- this one directed
not at the pundits he so enthralls but at the very people who have so
far rejected him on account of race. (emphasis added).

You know what, Mr. Cohen? His last speech on race WAS a bomb with people outside the punditry, because we are not besotted enough with him to ignore the fact that he tried to take blatant anti-American sentiments on the part of his pastor and mentor, and turn it into a "conversation about race." It had nothing to do with race until he made it so.

Mr. Cohen, I respectfully submit that you have NO IDEA why individual voters reject Obama. It couldn't possibly be because he is a socialist through and through, could it? No, he's black; it must be racism.

Richard Cohen...he seems to be a racist, lets see the msm of old and new are trying their best to say people who don't vote for Obama are racist...but his hatepreaching preacher isn't, the church isn't, this other little problem isn't racist in any way shape or form....oh no...

You leftist people are the racists...and it is coming back to bite you all with your PCness for most of my adult life right in the rear...

I love it...your agenda is going to backfire on all of you.

"Never murder your opponent when he is committing suicide." ~ W. Churchill

It was Mr. Chicken Little himself who first brought up the Willie Horton furlough disaster in his attempt to win the 1988 nomination.

Besides, everything in that ad was true.  Libs are soft on crime and the result is bloodshed.  The race part was 100% on their side.  THEY were the ones who made an issue out of race.

In all this effort to distance George H.W. Bush and the Republican Party from the Willie Horton ad, I have to ask...what, exactly, was wrong with the Willie Horton ad?  It accurately exploited Michael Dukakis' ineptitude, his abysmal furlough policy and his opposition to the death penalty.  It's only spoken of now in liberal circles because Willie Horton was black and they can use the opportunity to inject the racism canard into the context of the ad.  I mean, really, was Willie Horton a great patriot or something?  No.  He was a thug murderer...and the claim that his case was used against Dukakis because of Horton's race is extremely dishonest.  Period.  We weaken our correct position when we accept bogus liberal premises like the suggestion that the Willie Horton ad was inaccurate, "below the belt" or otherwise "out of bounds".  It was a perfectly honest and acceptable ad that liberals just didn't like.  End of story. 

This was attempted a while ago; someone claiming that Republicans would use a "Willie Horton-style" ad against Obama.

What do Horton, or weekend paroles have to do with Barack Obama?

Absolutely nothing. This is simply an attempt to re-link Republicans and Willie Horton together in people's memories, because they know the racist implications it carries.