After Vice President Joe Biden’s epic gaffe in which he suggested to a largely black audience in Virginia that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan wanted to “put y’all back in chains,” the mainstream media has been desperately seeking a way to shift the narrative. They’ve been unable to cope with the selection of Ryan, who doesn’t fit any of the preferred anti-conservative stereotypes: dumb (Bush), corrupt (Nixon), or mean (Cheney). And now they’re on the defensive about Biden’s race-baiting, too.
So the media is gearing up to do what they always do: counterattack.
The counterassault has already started, and it’s come from a supremely predictable angle: Biden isn’t the real racist, Mitt Romney is. This is an angle the left used successfully on Newt Gingrich’s brilliant “food stamp president” label for Obama. Now they’ll try to apply it to Romney. Touré tried to misdirect from Biden’s comments to Romney by stating that Romney’s ire at Biden – and particularly his line that Obama’s “angry” campaign ought to be sent back to Chicago – “niggerized” Obama, making him look like a stereotypical angry black man. Except that Obama is angry. And he’s making an ass of himself. But for Touré, Biden’s race-baiting and Obama’s rage are evidence of Romney’s racism.
That’s just the beginning. Next, the media will undoubtedly target Romney’s slogan that “Obama isn’t working,” suggesting that to imply a black man isn’t working is to “reinforce stereotypes” or some other such nonsense. In fact, members of the media have been making this argument to little effect for months. Of course, Romney means that Obama doesn’t work hard enough – he’s too busy partying with George Clooney and golfing – and doesn’t work for the country, since he’s a failed president. But that won’t stop the press.
Watch for the usual media suspects to lead the way: Media Matters flacks like Sam Stein of the Huffington Post; Greg Sargent or Philip Rucker from the Washington Post; or Christopher Rowland or Callum Borchers at the Boston Globe – the same fellows who took Obama administration talking points on Bain and wove them into a factually incorrect story implying that Mitt Romney controlled all aspects of the company during its outsourcing days.
The Romney campaign isn’t racist. Only one campaign in this election cycle has consistently invoked the race card: Obama’s. Now, they’ll try to direct their racial pot-stirring at Romney. And Biden just sped up their timetable for doing so.
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