Who’s behind the racist smears against President Barack Obama? None other than long-time Republican communications flack and Willie Horton ad creator Craig Shirley, according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript as it pertains to Shirley:

RACHEL MADDOW: One of the places where scary information is coming from, one of the places where town hall protests are being promoted and town hall protesters are getting their marching orders before they go, is a place called ResistNet.com. If you surf over to ResistNet.com, you will see that they bill themselves as, quote, “The online community for patriotic citizens who are opposing the Obama-led socialist agenda.” Right there on the front page, right at the top is the message, “WE NEED YOUR HELP,” all caps, “August Recess Health Care Blitz.”So, what sort of information is available at ResistNet.com for people who might want to “blitz” something in the August recess? Well, there’s this video which is titled “Obama equals Hitler,” the contents of which you can probably figure out based on the not-at-all ambiguous name and these nice shots.

You want to know specifically about what they say about health care? Well, there’s this helpful post, quote, “Waiting lines will be long. Others will die. Why is this being done? Back door reparations. I pray that God will strike Obama dead and all who stand with him, they are evil.”

So who runs ResistNet.com? Well, if you scroll way down to the bottom of this Web site, you will see that it is run by something called Grassfire.org. In fact, on their “about us” page, you will find that Grassfire is funding ResistNet as part of, quote, “our overall patriotic resistance efforts”-which is an awfully nice thing for Grassfire.org to do, I mean, to completely fund this Web site that’s calling President Obama “Hitler” and organizing against health care reform and posting death threats against the president. I mean, you know, kind of makes me want to know more about Grassfire.org.

Well, according to independent watchdog group Public Citizen, Grassfire.org is represented by the Washington, D.C.-based P.R. firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. The “Shirley” in Shirley & Banister Public Affairs is a man named Craig Shirley. Craig Shirley is a very long-time Republican PR operative whose resume includes the famous race-baiting Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign.

So, the next time you hear Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele say something like this.

CLIP OF MICHAEL STEELE ON FOX NEWS: And anyone out there who says that the Republican Party or state parties or Republican activists are out there doing that are flat-out lying. They are wrong.

MADDOW: Flat-out lying, they are wrong. Actually, they are not wrong. The Willie Horton ad-making Republican PR activist guy is the same guy that reps the anti-health care reform Obama equals Hitler Web site. No wonder people are afraid.