Playing the race card means to falsely accuse others of treating you unfairly because of your race or using your race against you. Falsey accusing someone of "playing to the racism of the American public" would fall under that. But now I'm confused. Does Obama think the American public is racist or not? You first said "He's accusing them of playing to the racism of the American public" which indicated to me that you think that he does. You then said "Nor has Obama accused the American public of racism". If I misunderstood you, I apologize. I'm just trying to understand what you meant.
No, he didn't acknowledge that the party brought it up in the past. He accused the party of bringing the issue up to the forefront in the future to scare voters.
Saying that someone is using racism to their advantage is indeed an indictment on their character. If John McCain were shown on TV saying what Obama says he'll say, he would be labelled a racist instantly, and rightly so. As far as I know, McCain and the GOP have been very careful to avoid using Obama's race against him. Is there a news story that I just completely missed? If so, I'd be interested to see it. After all, I'm hardly a McCain fanboy.
Sure, just a minute.
I haven't seen any quotes where they use the word "racist". I did find this quote by his campaign manager, Rick Davis: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."
washingtonpost.com
Obama didn't call McCain a racist directly. However, saying McCain will use race against him is pretty much the same thing. When he got called on it, he backtracked.
Yes, when it was initially brought up, he opposed it. He later supported it and was instrumental in getting the governor of Arizona and President Reagan behind it. He has talked about how he regrets his initial opposition.
However, there are reasons other than racism he had to oppose it. Adding a new federal holiday is no small deal. It costs billions of dollars each year and there are very few people in American history honored with their own federal holiday. The only other two are Washington (which is sort of combined with Lincoln) and Columbus. It's not something that should be done flippantly and it shouldn't be surprising that there was initial resistance. That's pretty flimsy evidence of racism and this is the sort of thing we don't need.
Even if you don't see Obama's comments the same way I do, there are a lot of people who do. For a man who positions himself as a post-racial healer here to bring people together, end diviseness, and change politics in Washington, he's starting to prove himself a pretty divisive character. This isn't surprising looking at his record (which is radical, to say the least) and the type of people he's surrounded himself with over the past few decades. But then, that's a whole other discussion.
Getting back to the topic at hand...
There's a lot of talk around here about how negative and cynical McCain is and how positive and civil Obama is. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I'm trying to point out that it's going both ways. McCain supporters aren't terribly excited about their candidate, but at least they know who he is and aren't set up for disappointment. Obama has created a lot of hype, but his followers are already getting disappointed as they see the facade start to erode.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion...
post those link here... I laugh sooo hard with pain... 
for your humor