Rep. John Lewis: Only Racists Criticize The One

Congressman George Lewis (D-GA) has compared the McCain campaign to that of segregationist George Wallace. Lewis said that the tone of the McCain campaign reminds him of Wallace:

"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

To be sure, there have been a few loons at the McCain rallies who said inappropriate things -- and Sen. John McCain called them out on it. (Unlike Barack Obama, who never disavowed, for example, the anti-Semites who write on his blog.)

Lewis, however, is characterizing any criticism of Obama as racist and attributing it directly to McCain-Palin. That is inaccurate and unfair. It also gives us a precursor of how an Obama administration would censor political discourse that questions anything Obama says or does. That political correctness will chill free speech in a way that the Patriot Act never did.