*Sigh.*

The trick to a good dog whistle is that it’s got to have plausible deniability. That way, nobody can be 100 per cent sure about the intended meaning, but it’s conveyed to the target audience anyway.

So sure, it’s possible that Romney’s statement was not intended as a racist dog whistle. But it looks and sounds exactly like one.

It’s also pretty damning that Romney’s telling such a brazen lie is par for the course, to the point where it barely raises an eyebrow anymore. As many have pointed out, even if he was talking about non-government jobs, the statement is still untrue. Law professor is a non-government job. Bestselling author is a non-government job. It’s pretty depressing that it’s got to the point where we’re all earnestly debating whether a front-runner for his party’s nomination for President is a calculating racist liar, or a casual racist liar, or a clumsy non-racist liar.

One final thing: Even if we concede that Obama is a “career politician”, it still puts him a cut above Romney in my estimation. Obama at least had to work his way *up* to being a career politician. Romney had a dad who was a state governor, and young Mitt followed him into the family business. As with Dubya, so with Romney: born on third base and thinks he hit a home run.