GOP Super PAC: Obama Is a 'Metrosexual, Black Abe Lincoln'
Apparently, being a black, well-groomed version of one of America's most beloved presidents is a bad thing. And along with a lot of chickens and Reverend Jeremiah Wright--it's the skeleton of a conservative Super PAC's $10 million attack plan.
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We're totally with you if all those sound a bit weird, but that's actually all in an advertisement commissioned by TD Ameritrade founder (and DNA Info founder and CEO) Joe Ricketts and obtained by The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg who published the story and portions of the storyboard online today. Zeleny and Rutenberg explain that odd metrosexual reference (yes, apparently the GOP still uses this metrosexual as a slur) as follows:
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.”
Which we guess means images like this (from the story board):
Sure it's one more confirmation that we're in a scummy Super PAC era, but this type of race-baiting ad proposal is just another example of people foolishly putting their race-baiting views on paper: Remember NOM's ham-fisted strategy to find eloquent African American spokespeople in order to cause racial division against gay marriage? Zeleny and Rutenberg do mention that this Super PAC's intention was to pursue what John McCain didn't let them: Dredging up Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (Although there was this $2.5 million anti-Obama-Wright ad from 2008.) They write:
The plan is designed for maximum impact, far beyond a typical $10 million television advertising campaign. It calls for full-page newspaper advertisements featuring a comment Mr. Wright made the Sunday after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he said.
Cue chickens:
Get it, chickens, Wright, 9/11, making Obama a chicken ... very classy.
Update 10:16 a.m. Good news! Mitt Romney has distanced himself from this attack ad (or the news of it). Bad news: the Romney team did it in a completely backhanded fashion--hey, it's politics, were you really expecting more? Via the Washington Post:
“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” campaign manager Matt Rhoades said. “It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
Update 12:44 p.m. It now appears that Joe Ricketts is distancing himself from the super PAC ad proposal too. In a statement to Politico, a Ricketts spokesperson writes:
Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called “Ricketts Plan” to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning. Not only was this plan merely a proposal – one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors – but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.
Images via NYT.
