Not the first time Jimbo’s caused The One some grief at an inopportune moment. Remember when he decided to go hug it out with Hamas just as the general election campaign was kicking off last year?

“The president does not believe that — that the criticism comes based on the color of his skin,” Gibbs said. “We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we’ve made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by this administration and previous administrations to stabilize our financial system, to ensure viability of our domestic auto industry.”…

Gibbs was asked by reporters why this is not a “teachable moment” on race similar to the one that Mr. Obama identified following the Cambridge police flap.

“Obviously, the president has, and has always had, great concerns about race relations in this country,” he replied. “He’s talked about them in speeches. He’s talked about them throughout his career in politics; believes we’ve made great strides, and obviously we’ve got work to do. But I — I don’t — I’m not sure I see this — this large national conversation going on right now.”

Rahm Emanuel and White House communications director Anita Dunn were also careful to steer WaPo away from the race angle in today’s story about conservative attacks. My operating theory has been that they’re playing good cop/bad cop with the left on this, keeping their hands clean while their fellow travelers race-bait anyone who so much as looks at The One cross-eyed, but I’m coming around to the idea that it’s gotten so out of hand that they may now see it as a genuine liability. If the idea was to bully Americans into backing ObamaCare by implying it’s racist to do otherwise, they’ve failed epically. Worse yet for his reelection prospects, if centrist Obama voters like Ann Althouse are starting to recoil in disgust at the sort of racial demagoguery that’s forever being used by O apologists then the White House has big, big problems ahead in 2012:

Lots of people who voted for Obama believed that his election would reflect the extent to which Americans had moved beyond racism. That was part of why some people voted for him. Little did we realize that it would turn every criticism of the President into an occasion to make an accusation of racism. Racism is revolting, but so is the notion that we aren’t allowed to criticize a President!

Like I said yesterday, so much for the “post-racial presidency.” Althouse wants a “solid, sound rebuke” of Carter’s garbage, which is very good advice ahead of The One’s media blitz on Sunday. He’s bound to get a question about race — several of them, probably — and I’m afraid the standard Obama above-the-fray equivocation (“well, both sides have behaved badly”) isn’t going to cut it this time. We’ve got a former president here sinking to the filthiest depths of racial McCarthyism, perfectly in keeping with the sort of venom spat by congressional Democrats over the past two months or so. You’ve been given a pass long enough, champ. Time to call off the dogs.