Land: Attention to Trayvon Martin Case Just an Effort to 'Gin up the Black Vote' for President Obama

Last weekend, Richard Land dedicated his radio program to discussing the Trayvon Martin case and the issue of race relations, warning that President Obama had "poured gasoline on the racialist fires" by talking about the issue and claiming that the all the attention being paid to the case is "being done to try gin up the black vote for an African-American president who is in deep, deep, deep trouble for re-election":

But it was Mr. Obama who turned this tragedy into a national issue. He should have learned from the Cambridge, MA police incident to stay out of these issues until the facts are clear. But he encouraged Americans to engage in soul-searching and then he said "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin." The President's aides claim he was showing compassion for the victim's family. In reality, he poured gasoline on the racialist fires.

Nearly half of all murder victims are black; the overwhelming majority of those crimes are committed by blacks. Black male teens, especially in urban areas, have been ravaged by drugs, by crime, by violence, and by failing public schools. Rather than holding rallies on these issues, the civil rights leadership focuses on racially polarizing cases to generate media attention and to mobilize black voter turnout. This is being done to try to gin up the black vote for an African-American president who is in deep, deep, deep trouble for re-election and who knows that he cannot win re-election without getting the 95% of blacks who voted for him in 2008 to come back out and show that they're going to vote for him again. And polls show that many blacks have become demoralized under the Obama economy because they're the ones who have suffered the most from his economic failures. So this Operation Vote, the deliberate targeting of minority groups by fostering ethnic resentment. But, I tell you, they're playing with fire and people are going to get hurt.