Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker:
Aside from the Romney team’s preference to keep the discussion on the economy, they likely feel that the less this election centers on discussions of religions with a history of bigotry, the better. Besides, when someone hits a grand slam off a slider, the wise pitcher doesn’t throw the same batter another slider in his next at-bat. This election season has already delivered the signal irony of Democrats possibly welcoming the return of Jeremiah Wright as a topic of conversation and Republicans running away from it. The Romney campaign—and the R.N.C.—may have realized not only that their candidate has a glass-house problem, but that the guy across the street has a bigger slingshot.
Yet what stands out most about the now-discarded Ricketts Plan—aside from the unwieldy but unforgettable appellation applied to Obama, “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln”—is not its myopia on religion but its even more myopic perspective on race. The plan to recruit an “extremely literate, conservative African American” as a spokesperson suggests that being merely black and right-leaning won’t cut it (literacy tests!). Beyond that, the section titled “Fending Off Racism” betrays a faith in that most outmoded of social tools: the Professional Black Friend.
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