Turnabout is fair play, as Barack Obama and his campaign found out today. Ten days after demanding the resignation of Geraldine Ferraro for her “divisive” comments on race, Ferraro launched another broadside at the Obama campaign. Calling Wright a “racist bigot,” she criticized Obama for his own failure to address divisiveness:

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday.

In the speech, Obama sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a broader context, in part by placing them on a continuum with Ferraro’s recent remark to the Daily Breeze that Obama is “lucky” to be black.

“To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,” Ferraro said today. “He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.”

On Tuesday, I pointed out the hypocrisy of Obama’s speech when it came to how it handled Ferraro’s comments. While not exactly exhibiting political sense, nothing of what Ferraro said came close to the volcanic demagoguery of Jeremiah Wright. Yet Obama chose to have his campaign go into hyperventilating outrage over Ferraro while excusing the racist and anti-American rhetoric of his pastor, spiritual mentor, and political adviser.

Obama may wish that he hadn’t chased Ferraro out of the Hillary Clinton campaign for another reason other than the obvious hypocrisy. She no longer has to worry about how her speech reflects on Hillary, and so Ferraro is much freer to speak her mind on this issue. Calling Wright a racist bigot may just be the opening stanza for Ferraro, who clearly is not in the mood for reconciliation. Ferraro will keep this story alive in the headlines until Obama backs off of the comparisons and apologizes, or until he winds up losing the nomination for this and other missteps in the controversy.

This isn’t going away. If Ferraro doesn’t get appeased, it may have only just started. (via The Politico)