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My first story is a multi-faceted one, but it has one theme: Mitt Romney has chosen the racist road to try to get elected. Those who claim not to be racist but use racist themes, that divide this nation on race, that demogogue like Jesse Helms, well they are racists also. Mitt, if the KKK hood fits, wear it.
Some examples of the story. From my diary earlier today:
This is not dog whistles. It's full out racism.
The racist attack is built on a lie. No one cut any work requirements. But it is not about reality. It's about whipping up racist hate to get votes.
Romney is the modern day George Wallace. America will retch his hate out. It is not 1968.
Romney defends the welfare ads as accurate, accusing Obama of offering state waivers as a political calculation designed to "shore up his base" for the election. He denies he was trying to stoke discredited questions about Obama's birthplace when he said at a Detroit rally Friday that no one had ever asked him for his Michigan birth certificate.
USA Today
Romney Goes Full Racist: Accuses Obama of Cutting Welfare Work Requirement to "Shore Up Base."
From my diary yesterday:
An interview with American Crossroads president Steven Law (Karl Rove's group that takes secret corporate and millionaire donations) shows their desperate plan:
Swing voters are "resistant" to the idea that Mr. Obama is radical or ideological, although Mr. Law believes that the administration's relaxation of work requirements in federal welfare rules [THIS IS A LIE REPEATED BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AS TRUE] could change that perception. "You can tell they're landing punches," he says of the Romney campaign's recent effort to raise this issue.
But the punches have to be targeted very carefully. Recent focus groups have convinced Mr. Law that the issue is "definitely resonating now with swing voters, including those who were Obama voters in 2008." And yet, he adds, "We also picked up conflicting emotions: The economy is so lousy for middle-income Americans that the same people who chafe at the rise of welfare dependency under Obama don't automatically default to a 'get-a-job' attitude—because they know there are no jobs."
Mr. Law concludes that welfare reform could be a "powerful issue to talk about this fall, but it needs to be done sensitively. Right now it may be more of an economic issue than a values issue: In other words, more people on welfare is another disturbing symptom of Obama's broken-down economy, rather than an indictment of those who are on welfare or the culture as a whole."
Wall Street Journal:How to Beat President Obama
Republicans See Racism as Only Road to Victory For Romney
But don't take my word for it. Many others are noticing. Chris Mathews took it to the Republican Party Chairman, telling a truth he thought was hell:
Matthews, to Preibus:
I have to call you on this Mr. Chairman. You’ve been suggesting that somehow Obama has been running a negative campaign and your guy is running a positive campaign, but that’s not accurate. They’ve both been negative. That cheap shot about 'I don’t have a problem with my birth certificate [from Romney] was awful. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card. This part about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest. You are playing that ethnic card there.
You can play your games and giggle about it, but the fact is your side is playing that card. When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you’re playing, and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s the race card. Yeah, if your name is Romney, yeah you were well-born, you went to prep school. Yeah, brag about it. Yeah, this guy [Obama] has an African name and he has to live with it.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough asked Matthews to clarify. "You think Mitt Romney’s playing the race card?"
"There’s no doubt he did on the birth certificate," Matthews said. "Why would he bring it up?...And I think the work requirement fits right into it."
Chris Matthews to GOP chair: 'You are playing that ethnic card'
Thomas Edsall of the New York Times:
The Romney campaign is willing to disregard criticism concerning accuracy and veracity in favor of “blowing the dog whistle of racism” – resorting to a campaign appealing to racial symbols, images and issues in its bid to break the frustratingly persistent Obama lead in the polls, which has lasted for the past 10 months.
The result is a campaign run at two levels. On the trail, Paul Ryan argues that “we’re going to make this about ideas. We’re going to make this about a positive vision for the future.” On television and the Internet, however, the Romney campaign is clearly determined “to make this about” race, in the tradition of the notorious 1988 Republican Willie Horton ad, which described the rape of a white woman by a convicted African-American murderer released on furlough from a Massachusetts prison during the gubernatorial administration of Michael Dukakis and Jesse Helms’s equally infamous “White Hands” commercial, which depicted a white job applicant who “needed that job” but was rejected because “they had to give it to a minority.”
The longer campaigns go on, the nastier they get. Once unthinkable methods become conventional.
snip
The principal media consultant for the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which will be running many of the anti-Obama ads over the next ten weeks, is Larry McCarthy, who produced the original Willie Horton ad.
New York Times: Thomas Edsall, Making the Election About Race
Or this:
Of course, Romney isn’t interested in the facts; he's interested in associating Obama with black and Hispanic undesirables bent on collecting welfare benefits and robbing white elderly people of their health insurance. The son of a politician who walked out of the 1964 Republican convention because of its opposition to blacks could well end up encouraging anti-black sentiments at the 2012 Republican convention. Like Poppy Bush, Romney is not a racist himself. He is, arguably, something worse: A man who, because he has no particularly pronounced views himself, is willing to say just about anything to get himself elected president.
The New Republic: Romney Cribs from the GOP’s Willie Horton Playbook
This is why it is essential to defeat Mitt Romney. He is a man unfit for the presidency of this nation. His racism disqualifies him. We're not going back to the worst of the past.
Now some good news for a quick second story:
Obama holds a 50%-46% over Romney among likely voters in Florida. In North Carolina, the two candidates are locked in a virtual dead heat, with Romney up 48%-47%. In both states, the poll, conducted from Aug. 22 to Aug. 26, has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Obama’s edge in Florida is bolstered by women voters, among whom he’s beating Romney 54%-42%, and by nonwhite voters, with whom he boasts a 70%-29% advantage. There are signs the incumbent is stitching together the same demographic coalitions that helped him capture Florida’s 29 electoral votes four years ago. Obama holds an eight-point lead among urban voters and a 13-point margin (54%-41%) with voters under 50. He also racks up 58% of self-identified “moderates” and manages to siphon off nearly one quarter of self-identified conservatives. In the sprawling, diverse Sunshine State, the President performs best in the Miami region, where he garners the support of 63% of respondents.
TIME/CNN Poll: Obama Leads Romney in Florida
And Kos reported today that Romney and the Billionaire Boys Club have given up on Pennsylvania.
Kos: Republicans give up on Pennsylvania
Finally, a fun song from the Raging Grannies responding to Todd Akin, from a diary Saturday by my partner, Effervescent:
Raging Grannies say FU to Akin+*
Legitimate rape is great birth control,
so says Todd Akin, and he oughta know.
If we are raped we can rest unafraid
cause we can't get pregnant if forceable laid.
Our female bodies are clever that way
We only get pregnant if we say ok
Doctors have told him so it must be so
The stork only comes if we don't say "no"
Rape won't make babies and that is a fact
There's no global warming, the Earth's really flat
We heard it on Fox news, so it must be true,
Well Mr. Akin, we say "F*CK YOU"!!!
(the ladies present their middle fingers)
And that's some of the Obama news for tonight, August 27, 2012.
Link to Transcripts and Documents.