Preaching Division in South Carolina For months, Mr. Gingrich has made racial resentment an integral part of his platform as a conservative challenger to Mitt Romney. He has traversed the country calling President Obama "the greatest food-stamp president in American history" and presenting African-Americans with the great revelation that they should prefer paychecks to federal handouts. When he was called on it at the debate by Juan Williams of Fox News, he took the measure of the crowd and doubled down. "The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history," he announced, to wild cheers. I know among the politically correct, you're not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable. What you're not supposed to do, actually, is mislead the public. The fact is that Mr. Obama has "put" no one on food stamps. People apply for food assistance, known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, because they're poor or out of work and their family is hungry. The number of people using the program, which is now at a peak, began rising with the recession, in 2007, and continued through four of the toughest years ever faced by the poor and near-poor in modern history. Mr. Obama eased the eligibility requirements as part of his stimulus program, a desperately needed measure that helped struggling families and the economy. Non-Hispanic whites also far outnumber blacks receiving SNAP benefits. As for the notion that these are people who somehow like their dependency, 30 percent of SNAP households have income from work - a reminder of the brutal impact of the recession on wages. But these are inconvenient details to Mr. Gingrich, who implied that the rise in federal aid was a sad indication of the insufficient work ethic of black Americans. If only they were more willing to be janitors! Asked by Mr. Williams why he has frequently suggested that poor children be employed as school janitors, Mr. Gingrich said his daughter worked as a church janitor at age 13 and liked earning the money and that it would be a good way for poor students to learn the value of work. But, he suggested, Mr. Obama doesn't want them to work at all because liberal elites prefer to "maximize dependency." Don't try to follow any kind of logical thread of why the president wouldn't want the jobless rate to decrease; there isn't one. This trumpet was sounded to feed the prejudice of people who already believe that blacks and other poor people don't really like to work and to deflect the growing public awareness that the Republican Party's highest priority is protecting the rich from higher taxes. For these divisive thoughts, Mr. Gingrich earned his ovation and Mr. Williams won a round of boos. Rick Santorum also got in on the game, responding to a question about high rates of black poverty with a lecture on the importance of work, high school graduation and marriage. Unfortunately, he said, the Obama administration refuses to encourage those kinds of good choices. In South Carolina, where a Confederate flag still waves on the front lawn of the State Capitol largely because of the efforts of the state Republican Party, it remains good primary politics to stir up racial animosity and then link it to President Obama. Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and the crowd that cheered them are following in a long and tawdry tradition, singling out a minority group for lectures while refusing to support policies that help all Americans.