The pushback is getting very ugly on criticism of UN Ambassador Susan Rice for going on 5 Sunday TV interview shows and stoutly maintaining Benghazi was a riot over the Mohammed video -- in the face of what we now know was available information that the Benghazi incident was a terror attack from an Al Qaeda affiliate. Rep. James Clyburn maintained that critics were using "code words" such as "incompetent" (as whites are never called incompetent), while Richard Wolfe of MSNBC avers there can be no other reason than racism for criticizing the Ambassador who had access to classified information but nonetheless went out of her way to spread far and wide an obvious fairy tale, claiming she only read the talking points that were handed to her.

Putatively more respectable quarters, such as the Washington Post editorial board have jumped on the race card bandwagon:

Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are charging, that the [97 Republican House] signatories of the letter are targeting Ms. Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories deny that, and we can't know their hearts. What we do know is that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly half are from states of the former Confederacy. You'd think that before launching their broadside, members of Congress would have taken care not to propagate any falsehoods of their own.

William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection demonstrates what an utter crock this line of reasoning is:

The WaPo Editorial Board must have forgotten the opposition to Condoleezza Rice's confirmation, which was led by former Klansman Robert Byrd and a guy who left a girl to die:

Leading the charge against Rice on Tuesday were Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Barbara Boxer of California.

Boxer, one of two Democrats to vote against Rice's nomination in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Rice's answers to her questions were "completely nonresponsive" and raised more issues about her credibility than they answered.

Rice, Condoleezza, reveived fewer favorable votes in her Secretary of State confirmation than any nominee in almost 25 years and more negative votes than any nominee in 180 years.  Twelve of the thirteen votes against Rice were from White Males, including the aforementioned former Klansman.

Boxer accused Rice of lying about Sadaam Hussein's WMD program, and Rice pushed back that they relied on the available intelligence, among other things. 

This would become a theme in Boxer's continuously demeaning conduct towards Rice, which included mocking the fact that Rice had no children during the Iraq Surge hearings in January 2007 (note, Boxer also used the term "dark cloud" which, had it been used by a Republican as to a black Democratic nominee, surely would have been called a dog whistle or worse)(full video here):

It is clear to me that the second term of President Obama is going to see heightened fanning of the flames of racial resentment. Charges of racism when a black liberal is criticized are now becming automatic, and the establishment liberals, who once rejected or at least tempered the more outrageous claims of racism, are no longer using common sense.

We are in for a very rough time ahead.