OK, so I changed my mind. Sue me.

I don't disagree with Eugene Robinson's assessment (check out the link below), but I would have been much, much harder on Westmoreland and the GOP. This kind of overt bigotry deserves a flamethrower in response, not Robinson's mildly sarcastic rejoinder.

This should (but won't), however, cure one reflexive media habit, and that is recoiling in mock horror when someone like Howard Dean has the "uppityness" to call the Republican Party "The White Party." Anyone who disagrees must have surely not been paying attention. Statements like these and the ethnic makeup of the crowd at the Xcel center in St. Paul are all you need to know.

Oh, and Eugene? Westmoreland's English is anything but plain, if by that you mean comprehensible. The boy wouldn't know a dangling participle from an unzipped fly.

PostPartisan - Quick takes by The Post's opinion writers

The notion that Obama is somehow reaching beyond his station has been a subtext of the attacks on his eloquence, his academic resume, his ambition -- qualities that are usually prized in a leader but that are somehow twisted by Obama’s opponents into negatives. It is within even Lynn Westmoreland’s limited grasp to understand that “uppity” means one thing: Who does this black guy think he is to run for president? If Republicans are going to ask that question, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it through hints and nudges. Just do like Lynn Westmoreland and put it in plain English.

Technorati Tags: Lynn Westmoreland, GOP, the White Party, KKK, south, confederacy, uppity, racism