Will Romney Reach out to Racists in Debates?
Will Romney Reach out to Racists in Debates?
September 28, 2012 at 12:30 PM(The Root) — In 2008 something remarkable happened: America elected a black man with a Muslim-sounding name president. The even more remarkable part? That he beat a white war hero from an American military dynasty.
But there are plenty of political watchers who believe this turn of events happened only because the war hero was not willing to engage in the political equivalent of nuclear warfare with his opponent.
As related in “Game Change”, the best-selling book about the 2008 presidential election, Republican nominee Sen. John McCain was pressured by his campaign advisers to exploit the controversy surrounding comments by then-Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As told in the book, McCain — still haunted by some of the negative campaigning invoking his foreign-born, adopted daughter during the bruising 2000 GOP primary, in which he was eventually beaten by George W. Bush — eschewed their advice. The rest, as they say, is history.
There remain conservatives who believe that if McCain had just been willing to “go there” so to speak, he might have won. Some of those very same conservatives have sought to revisit the Rev. Wright controversy this election cycle.….snip….
We’ve already seen him begin flirting with the racially inflammatory line by making a joke about his birth certificate that many saw as a reference to the manufactured controversy surrounding the president’s birth. Romney’s language in the debates will confirm whether or not he is willing to cross that line in the quest for victory.