Racism is a Strategy: The Romney Campaign's Strategic Race-Baiting
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 12:30AM Romney has made a few moves that seem designed to appeal to voters with an antipathy to minorities. It is hard to remember a candidate ever using a chorus of boos at the NAACP as a plank prominently displayed in his campaign platform. Many people might be at least personally embarrassed by such a reception. Not Romney, who afterwards declared that he knew he would be booed at the NAACP but went anyway.
That is a remarkable statement. In the careful planning of a political campaign, these boos were anticipated and embraced precisely because they send a message that, in my opinion, the GOP wants the electorate to hear: Romney is the candidate that the NAACP does not want in the White House. As we near November, that message has become louder and more explicit. Romney has said that Obama needs to take his "campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago." And appearing on CBS, he described the Obama campaign as "designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealousy and anger."