Very interesting video to watch above.  The whole thing is filled with animosity and I say good for Chris Matthews for calling the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus out directly for his party’s bullshit.  If you have any doubt about the intentions of Romney to cling on to the racial resentments and the Republican whisper campaign that Obama is a secret Muslim born in another country wishing the destruction of the country …. well – then you should read this and cleanse yourself.

The Romney campaign is trying to sew doubt in the minds of Americans just like the Tobacco industry did with cigarettes.  If you repeat a lie enough …. sooner or later people start to believe it.  And Romney is aggressively, secretly pursuing this line of attack while he publicly denounces it.  But the ball keeps rolling on the Republican side.

Jamelle Bouie points out that Romney referred to welfare recipients as Obama’s base i.e. black people; he writes HERE:

At this point, in fact, Romney has stopped trying to hide the extent to which he wants to “otherize” Obama as a president for nonwhites. In an interview with USA Today this weekend, he defended the welfare ads by accusing Obama of offering waivers as a political calculation designed to “shore up his base.”

At best, Romney means Obama’s “base” is made up of welfare recipients. And the latest report from Pew Research provides insight into why the Romney campaign has adopted the Lee Atwater playbook for winning elections. Just five years ago, party identification among white voters was near parity — 46 percent identified as Republican, 44 percent as Democrat. Now, Republicans have a twelve point advantage among white voters, 52 percent to 40 percent. Overall, the GOP has become incredibly homogenous — 87 precent of self-identified Republicans are white, compared to just 61 percent of self-identified Democrats.

But in reality even though Republicans do not want to acknowledge this – the majority of welfare recipients are WHITE PEOPLE.  And they’re not even being coy about it.  Romney surrogate – John Sununu – said this about Obama on Fox News in July HERE:

This guy doesn’t understand how to create jobs. So there is no surprise — there should be because of that statement no surprise on why he failed so miserably over the last four years, in terms of job creation. He has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.

Shortly thereafter that – an anonymous Romney aide told Buzzfeed this HERE:

“I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate.  The bottom line is there’ll be counterattacks.”

Slate does a wonderful job of putting together an entire timeline of “otherisms” that the Romney campaign continues to subtly and not so subtly slide in.  It’s called a trend.  You can read them all HERE; an excerpt:

James Zogby explains what Romney is doing HERE:

Earlier this week I received a mass fundraising mailer from the Romney campaign. It included a glossy full color photo of the candidate in wrinkled jeans and wind-breaker, standing in front of a weathered barn emblazoned with a massive American flag. Under the photo was written:

“James,Thank you for believing in America as much as I do…this is a moment that demands we return to our basic values and core principles.

Mitt Romney”

The fundraising letter that accompanied the photo featured, on just its first page, in only 15 lines of text, the words “America” and “American” 10 times. The letter began: “I believe in America… I believe in the American Dream. And I believe in American strength.” And continued: “This election is a battle for the soul of America.” It concluded by asserting that this campaign is “to reclaim America for the people.”

While only a touch more subtle than the rejected “paint him with the Jeremiah Wright is a radical brush,” the net effect of this Romney mailing is the same. In case you missed the point: Mitt Romney is the “real” American; he is the one who believes in “American values;” and he alone is fighting for the “soul of America.”

The Wall Street Journal interviews Steven Law -the President of American Crossroads – the Karl Rove led group with $300 million in funds from unknown billionaires trying to convince you that an Obama 2nd term would be a disaster HERE:

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 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.”

There is a clear correlation to Romney’s claims and ads that Obama cut the work out of welfare.  What do the fact-checkers say about Romney’s claims?  We wrote about that HERE:

Factcheck.org says the ad is false HERE:

A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The plan does neither of those things.

Politifact calls it a Pants on Fire lie HERE:

The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!

The fact checker at the Washington Post – Glenn Kessler – gives it 4 Pinnochios … they’re most dishonest rating HERE:

Conservatives may have legitimate concerns about the process in which the administration has approached this issue, or its legal reasoning, but that does not excuse the Romney campaign from charging that there is an “Obama plan” to weaken the law and issue welfare checks to people who do not work.

All things being equal, the Romney ad leans more toward four Pinocchios. There is something fishy about the administration’s process on this memorandum, but that does not excuse the Romney campaign’s over-the-top ad.

And if you want to look at the politics of all of this from 30,000 feet up – you can read this very revealing Pew Research study that illuminates the “master narrative” in the media versus what voters actually think.  You can read that HERE:

• Voter perceptions vary from the media narrative. When we surveyed these personal themes with voters, the strongest impression was that 52% thought Obama was a person of good moral character-though it represented just 1% of the coverage about him and 10% of his coverage suggested the opposite. The theme about Romney that resonated most with voters was that he was prone to gaffes. Nearly half of voters, 47% associate him with that.

• In cable television, Fox and MSNBC’s coverage of the candidates’ character themes are mirror images of each other. Fox has offered a mixed view of Romney, but its assessments of Obama’s record and character have run negative by a ratio of six to one. The numbers are almost identical, in reverse, for MSNBC. Meanwhile, CNN has offered less about the campaign in general, but what is has, to a greater degree than its cable rivals, resembles what audiences would find in the rest of the media.

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