The New York Times obtained a campaign playbook by high-profile Republican strategists.
Up until very recently, Joe Ricketts was not widely recognized as a major political player. That changed a bit when the wealthy AmeriTrade founder whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, invested heavily in Republican Deb Fischer's Senate campaign in Nebraska, giving her an unexpected win in a hard-fought primary.
According to a rather remarkable report in the New York Times today, Ricketts' role in GOP politics is poised to become even more provocative.
A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the "super PAC" era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.
"The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way," says the proposal....
"The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good" was commissioned by Rickets and overseen by controversial GOP ad man Fred Davis, he of "demon sheep" fame. The project will reportedly be bolstered by a $10 million investment.
The Ricketts Plan's central focus, apparently, is race -- the smear campaign not only wants to focus on Obama's former Christian pastor, it also intends to hire an "extremely literate conservative African-American" as its spokesperson. (Presumably, a literate, conservative African-American wouldn't do; Ricketts is looking for an extremely literate conservative African-American. Nothing but the racist best for this super PAC.)
What's more, once this spokesperson gets to work, his job will be to accuse Obama of being a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."
In case you think I'm kidding, I'm not. Indeed, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
This project is so remarkable, it's hard to know where to start, but let's unwrap the plan because I think this is important [Update: The Ricketts Plan will not include Wright attack ads.]
First, much of this is based on the notion, popular in right-wing circles, that Obama wasn't sufficiently "vetted" in 2008. If only Americans had heard more about Jeremiah Wright four years ago, the theory goes, Obama wouldn't have won.
This is ridiculous. Portions of Wright's sermons were on a near-constant media loop for months, and were the basis of a slew of attack ads in 2008. Voters didn't much care.
Second, a project like the Ricketts Plan would likely represent the most shameless effort to play the race card this year. If the right were confident about defeating the president on the issues, it wouldn't feel the need to exploit racial animus. This plan, in other words, comes across as rather desperate.
Third, it's not at all clear a campaign like this would have the desired effect. Are there really millions of on-the-fence voters out there who aren't sure whether or not to support the president, but who'll be swayed by stale talk about Jeremiah Wright with a racial subtext?
Fourth, it's a reminder that many Republicans have never heard the adage about the futility of fighting the last war. Too many conservatives haven't updated their 2008 talking points, and seem a little too eager to refight the previous campaign on their preferred terms.
And finally, there's the small matter of Mitt Romney and just how low he's willing to go to win. Four years ago, John McCain decided to keep Wright and race-based attacks off the table. Will Romney do the same thing?
Asked this morning about the NYT report, the former governor said he hasn't "read the papers yet." He'll need a more substantive line soon.
Update: Romney's campaign manager added, "We repudiate any efforts on our side to" use Wright against the president.
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Seriously ? That's all you've got .
Imagine , just imagine the millions wasted on the racist diatribe and others like it was diverted into investment and job creation.
Imagine that Ricketts , helping the country instead of trying to buy your puppet a seat in the White House .
What a despicable POS.
And again Hussein . Seriously Hussein Hussein Hussein.
Booga Booga Booga . What a terrifying name
This is about people who have too much money and too much damn time on their hands. Pay your fair share of taxes and find other ways to amuse yourself. Just pathetic. Immature and blatantly racist. The only people they'll fool is the morons who watch Fox who would never vote for Obama anyway.
Do these kind of people actually have friends and colleagues who take them seriously?
HOLY CRAP. Srsly, I hope you guys lead with this story tonight. I read a bit into this document, and labeling it "strategy" just blows my mind. The language here, the advisory tone, the between-the-lines assumptions, even from just a cursory look, literally blows my mind.
I've been on the receiving end of this sort of thing in the past, as a target. The history of attack politics is long and storied, with Willie Horton probably the most infamous. My turn in the hot seat was in 1992, when teaching at a school Bill Clinton had started in Arkansas, a summer school for gifted and talented high school seniors.
We got word that the same filmmaker who made the Willie Horton video had targeted our school to be the "smear issue" for the full-on attack on Clinton (this was before Gennifer Flowers played the role so much better, and let us off the hook).
I still have my copy of the video. My grandma watched it and she couldn't help believing that I was brainwashing children, turning them gay and leading them to suicide.
The film was the perfect object for academic rhetorical analysis, as is this document. My god, it is just screaming for detailed study. I'd love to read it, if some honors student in rhetoric, or a master's student in speech-comm would take it on.
Hell, I bet there's even a dissertation in here, if you had a whole passel of these kind of documents. And in the age of the Internet and wikileaks, maybe there will be!
Obama bribed Wright to keep quiet for a reason. Kick over the hornet's nest if you want to, but don't be surprised when you get stung.
"Do these kind of people actually have friends and colleagues who take them seriously?"
Yep, other NASCAR owners.....Sorry, just had to go there....
This crap didn't work four years ago how do they think... Ooh wait. Now there are SuperPacs. The B.S. bullhorn will be many times larger.
My question is how this secret plan got out. By being reported, it's essentially dead. You're not going to shock the Dem Convention when they've got three months notice. So either someone close to Ricketts leaked it to the Times because he/she realized it was a terrible idea, or this was never a serious plan in the first place. No doubt someone had the idea and drew up a blueprint, but probably realized it wouldn't work. So why not leak it and have a day or two of the media talking about Wright? Probably have the same negligible effect as the campaign and save $10 million in the process.
Exactly, Bean.
Kind a trial balloon and free coverage at the same time. How many times will we hear the name Jeremiah Wright in the next day or 2? Probably more than we've heard it in the last couple of years. That is, if you live outside of the RW bubble.
Thıs ısn't polıtıcs; ıt ıs hate speech, race baıtıng and fear mongerıng of a kınd that even George Wallace fınally came to not just denounce but apologıse for endulgıng ın.
When I read the artıcle thıs mornıng ın The New York Tımes, my jaw dropped open. I could not belıeve that ın 2012 anyone would stoop to thıs kınd of crappola.
And to thınk that I used to lıke the Chıcago Cubs.
My first thought when reading this was "Okay, guess I'm not a Cubs fan anymore." And if I were a a black player for the Cubs, I might just "accidentally" drop a fly ball or swing and miss a few extra pitches along the way...
The Cubs don't need any help losing; they have been doing it successfully for over a century. Ricketts is just another owner who will come and go as far as Cubs fans are concerned. It is the team that matters not the owner. The fans have no great love for Ricketts because he is trashing up Wrigley Field with ads and other crap. But that applies to any owners of the team. We hate what they are doing to the ballpark.
It's important to read the subtitle of that report correctly:
Plan to End his "Spending for Good".
This is stupid. No one but the tea party will buy this tripe and they are already in the bag.
27% of the population.... Wow that is great. Next thing they will do is pick Jan Brewer as VP....
(sigh)
I remember when doing the right thing for the right reasons was laudable.
So, are they giving up on the Muslim lie then if they're going to push the Rev. Wright issue?
I am sure there will be a tie in to both.
That said, does it matter? The people who believe that Obama is a Muslim, won't see Wright as a pastor of a church of Christ. In their minds they are mutually inclusive which in itself proves that Obama is a communist, socialist, Muslim from Kenya who wants to GOD DAMN AMERICA. See how that works?
GOTPers, completely brain dead "morans'.
I think this is hilarious, because it's all premised on the notion that nobody knows who Obama is.
It's gonna backfire all over Mr. Romney!
Wait. When did being compared to Abe Lincoln come across as a bad thing?
He freed them slaves, gosh dang it. Wasn't it Fox who was always trying to say that Bush was really just like Lincoln?
My head spins from right-wing whiplash.
It's the gay thing in re: to Lincoln
These guys live in their own alternate reality. That's why they think these attack will be effective.
I would assume that there are people in the south who still hate Lincoln, they are called ignorant racists.
Does Romney understand what opening the Wright door means? Because if he opens that door I think his Mormonism becomes fair game. How many baptisms of dead Jews did he participate in? How much money did he put into Prop 8 in California? How many times have they baptized Ann Frank? It's relevant and it won't be touched but if they open the door to Wright let the games begin.
the right hates Pres. Obama because 1] he is black 2] he is a decent man ... i wonder what romney will do. i am watching a man sell his soul, bit by bit , to every feckless, smarmy right wing group out there. what a treat. thanx mitt.
The right hates Obama because he's 1) a Democrat and 2) non white.
That's the gist of it.
ems, you got the order backwards I think!
And we're supposed to just over look: Jerry Falwell, the AFA, Dennis Terry, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, et.al - all who claim "morals, to be "Christians", and whose extremist views and rhetoric slap squarely in the face of that "Christ" they claim to follow? Yeah, I'll bite........
The Ricketts are trying to stop Obama's spending? That would be the same Ricketts who are trying to milk $200 million of tax money from the City of Chicago to renovate Wrigley Field? Those Ricketts?
Ricketts: What's good for me is good for, well, me.
well. now it's clear why the cubs are worse than they were before.
instead of putting money in politics, daddy should give tom and the other kids money to update wrigley instead of wanting us chicago taxpayers to do it.
win the world series, ricketts, and that will get more people to vote for whomever you want.
That is a super excellent point. Do the taxpayers of Chicago dislike President Obama so much that they want to subsidize this a-hole's baseball plans so he can use his own money to attack Obama? He obviously thinks that's the way it should work. Hopefully the good people of Chicago see it otherwise.
The Birthers still think their ploy will work too. All the people that hate Obama because he is black and a muslum will now have to hate him because he is black and Christian and will definately vote for Romney now. Go Cubs!!
This assumes that all of them can help themselves. Some of them can't.
If it didn't work the first time around, and after four effin' years of not so much as a wet fart from the President, what the hell makes these yahoos think it's going to work on this go? Seriously, if they had any new revelations about Wright, I'm thinking it would have hit the fan well before now.
Why don't they just go on an extravagant treasure hunt to the Cave of Wonders and busy themselves trying to find Obama's Kenyan/Indonesian birth certificate so they can leave the rest of us alone.
Although McCain shied away from it -- these were essentially Sarah Palin's campaign tactics... and we saw how that worked for her.
Hmm, come to think about it... according to the blogosphere, Sarah Palin's admirers are giving Palin credit for Ms Fischer's primary win. I forget their logic behind it exactly. I think it's along the lines of "Sarah made a tweet; Fischer won -- Success!"
Oh do pass the popcorn, this is going to be a fun election cycle.
This is just plain ridiculous and racist hate rearing its ugly head again. Down right sickening and appalling that this hatred still goes on like this. Come on America aren't we better than this? I would hope to think we are. I was a big Cubs fan but Iam rethinking that. And going with the White Sox.
These republicans are so pathetic. They have a candidate that they hate, and felt he was not fit to run. But after all the rest of the r candidates fell by the wayside, all of a sudden he's just fine! The people who claim to be the morality of the country, again have shown their true colors, and those colors are very ugly!
Greetings! Rachel
This will not work due to the fact that the american people even the world has advanced beyond the bigoted thinking of this fella whom is planning to post these ads to television against President Obama. In fact these ads will further give incentive to americans to vote against Mitt Romney and the republicans and vote for President Obama and the democrats.
Peace be unto you!
Marquest Burton
We haven't seen anything yet. By the time this race is over, at the very least we'll hearsomething along the lines of "That Black Man...". I'd put odds of the N word coming out at least at 60%.
From the above article, emphasis is mine:
"A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the "super PAC" era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
The plan, which is awaiting approval,........"
Approval from whom?!?
We've still got 6 months or so to go before the election! As another poster mentioned, time to lay in a generous supply of popcorn - this is going to be a very l-o-n-g summer and fall.
Glad to have someone pointing out how hilarious it is that they think Obama wasn't properly vetted on Wright. It takes a special kind of I-hate-the-leftist-media delusion to think that Wright, Ayers and ACORN weren't sufficiently covered. You couldn't get away from those issues, even on MSNBC. They were covered and covered and covered again for months and it's nice to see someone pointing it out for the conservatives who have somehow forgotten. This article is spot on -- if they insist on fighting the last fight that didn't win, they're going to lose. Badly.
Guess I'll catch all of the Cubs games on television. Damn, I had plans for at least six games at Wrigley this year. Can't let my loot be filtered to the likes of this dude.