It’s silly season in American politics, when everyone gets together and circlejerks about how bad the other side’s ideas are. Today is no exception, because get a load of the latest campaign plan from Republican donor Joe Ricketts (via the Times):
A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the ‘super PAC’ era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
[…] The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.
[…The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”
First of all, is putting out a casting call for an “extremely-literate African-American” the most unintentionally telling example of latent racism in recent memory?
Second, what would this hypothetical “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln” look like, and would he not be the coolest figure American history ever produced? The answers (in reverse order) are “yes, he wold be” and “like this”:
Who wouldn’t vote for this man?
UPDATE: As MSNBC’s Chuck Todd reports:
Consultants and Ricketts family aren’t just walking from the Rev. Wright story, they are running.
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 17, 2012
So much for that plan. And Metrosexual Black Lincoln had so much to teach us…
