by Taylor Marsh
Harold Ford, Jr. is up against it. The Republican Party's "southern strategy" of 2006, that is. A blonde and an African American, hinting of inter-racial dating in a conservative state. What will Tennessee do? Mehlman and the Republican Party intend to help voters figure it out.
Welcome to "Ken Mehlman's cesspool," as Matthews stated yesterday. Russert interviewed Mehlman on it, too. Tony Snow joined Matthews later, saying the Harold Ford ad was just fine with him. He and Mehlman are wrong.
The ad is playing "the race card," said Bob Herbert. He went further stating that it's what Republicans do.
I'll make it even plainer. The Republican Party is revealing the racist vein that runs through their political soul. It's scraping the bottom of the barrel in a tight race Republicans feel they simply have to win. The Republican Party won't pull the ad and they won't disown it. So, it continues to play in Tennessee, which is the way they like it. It's race baiting, period.
Today, the NAACP weighed in.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People criticized the ad.
"It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women," Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington NAACP office, told the Los Angeles Times.
The Corker campaign denounced the ad, saying it is "tacky, over the top and is not reflective of the kind of campaign we are running."
RNC spokesman Danny Diaz has defended the ad's accuracy and said it will run its full course. It cost $457,944 to buy the time for the ad, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Because the ad was created by an outside group that contracts with the Republican National Committee, neither the RNC nor Corker's campaign saw it in advance and can't order it to be taken off the air.
See that last line? Trust me, if the RNC wanted the ad pulled they could pull it. It's a patent falsehood to say otherwise.
Welcome to Ken Mehlman's cesspool, Race Baiting 'R Us. It has been the Republican way to do business for decades. They're going to their southern strategy well one more time.