{"id":187,"date":"2012-08-28T04:12:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-28T04:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=187"},"modified":"2012-08-30T21:40:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T21:40:10","slug":"mitts-race-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/mitts-race-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitt’s Race Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Here’s Ed Kilgore, now at\u00a0Political Animal<\/a>, on a subject that turns my stomach. Once again we see demonstrated very clearly that there’s nothing Mitt Romney won’t say or do to gain the Presidency. The GOP has been addicted to the “Southern Strategy<\/a>” since Nixon or before, and Mitt Romney is showing that he’s not above it either. \u00a0It’s shameful and raises the question again of when decent people will once and for all turn their backs on the GOP.<\/p>\n

Romney and His Race Card\u2014\u201cWhat Are You Going To Do About It?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Regular readers of Political Animal should find this\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0of Mitt Romney\u2019s stretch-run strategy and message, as articulated by Thomas Edsall in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, very familiar:<\/p>\n

The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with commercials that develop two themes designed to turn the presidential contest into a racially freighted resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ads that accuse President Obama of gutting the work requirements enacted in the 1996 welfare reform legislation present the first theme. Ads alleging that Obama has taken $716 billion from Medicare \u2014 a program serving an overwhelmingly white constituency \u2014 in order to provide health coverage to the heavily black and Hispanic poor deliver the second. The ads are meant to work together, to mutually reinforce each other\u2019s claims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Edsall, as you may recall, has been\u00a0suggesting for a good while<\/a>\u00a0that this is the sort of politics the Tea Party Movement is all about.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s the most important sense in which the Romney campaign has finally surrendered unconditionally to the Right: not simply accepting its political positions or promising to make its priorities his own, or placing on his ticket their favorite politician\u2014but also adopting its meta-message about the kind of people Obama represents (those people<\/em>) and the kind of people who are suffering from his redistributionist ways.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear by now that the Romney campaign is going to\u00a0shrug off<\/a>\u00a0the almost universal denunciation of his welfare ads (and to only a lesser extent, his Medicare ads that show a white senior frowning as the narrator says ObamaCare is \u201cnot for you\u201d) as a pack of despicable, race-baiting lies\u2014or use the so\u2019s-your-old-man argument that Obama\u2019s campaign tactics justify his own. If nothing else, his wizards probably figured out some time ago that the \u201cwelfare\u201d crap offered a rare opportunity to hit notes equally effective with \u201cthe base\u201d and the non-college educated white voters who make up a high percentage of this election\u2019s \u201cswing.\u201d Add in the thick armor conservatives have built for themselves against any accusations of racism\u2014now, almost by definition, they believe only liberals are racists, and only white people are targets of racism\u2014and it was probably an easy call for Team Mitt, particularly since truthfulness is not a factor at all.<\/p>\n

The Romney campaign\u2019s attitude seems to be that of the famous nineteenth century rogue William (Boss) Tweed, who when confronted by journalists with his misdeeds, said: \u201cWell, what are you going to do about it?\u201d Romney\u2019s not going to be shamed out of his unsavory tactics. But on the other hand, if his gambit fails, not only will his presidential ambitions perish once and for all, but just maybe the kind of politics he has come to exemplify\u2014rich people encouraging the middle class to \u201ckick down\u201d at \u201cthose people\u201d\u2014will take a hit as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n