“Hide the children, Martha — Obama is comin’!”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/25/149822/commentary-goofy-gop-plans-to.html

Commentary: Goofy GOP plans to stop Obama's re-election

Posted on Friday, May 25, 2012

Leonard Pitts Jr. | The Miami Herald

<snip>Hughes died 45 years ago this week, but the need for the reminder survives. Consider two headlines from last week about the revitalization of racially-provocative smears against President Obama. One story, originating in The New York Times, concerned a plan floated to — and wisely shot down by — a GOP Super PAC. It sought $10 million for ads tying Obama to incendiary statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. If that leaves you feeling déjà vu all over again, it’s because that controversy was already litigated — and dismissed — four years ago.

This goofy plan to revive it envisioned the hiring of “an extremely literate conservative African-American” spokesman (“How can you accuse us of racism? We’ve got us an extremely literate African American spokesman!”) to argue that Obama lied when he presented himself as, ahem, a “black metrosexual Abe Lincoln.”

The second story was nearly as bizarre. It seems Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett told a radio interviewer it’s “possible” he’ll hold the president off that state’s ballot unless he gets proof Obama was born in the U.S.A. Perhaps that makes you think Bennett, who has gubernatorial aspirations, is pandering to the lunatic fringe. Perish the thought. “I’m not a birther,” he said, presumably with a straight face. “I believe that the president was born in Hawaii — or at least, I hope he was.”

So it appears the fall campaign will turn, at least in part, upon a renewed effort to convince people that the president — a man they’ve seen daily for three years now, a man who, the polls suggest, voters find personally likable even when they disagree with his politics — is a scary and mysterious Other: “Hide the children, Martha — Obama is comin’!”

These pathetic retreads are the kind of ideas you get from people operating on bad food and too little sleep.