Let The G.O.P. Games Begin

[Slick Willie and his "spiritual advisor", Rebb'n Wright.]
If you thought Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama throughout this campaign were classless, wait till you get a load of what the GOP has in store.

The North Carolina Republican Party is planning to roll out a television advertisement on Monday attacking a pair of Democrats running for governor in the state for endorsing Senator Barack Obama by playing a clip of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, excoriating the United States.

The release of the commercial, which Republican officials said would debut during 6 p.m. newscasts in the state on Monday, injects a potentially divisive racial element into the state’s upcoming Democratic presidential primary on May 6. The advertisement features a narrator intoning, “For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor.”

The North Carolina G.O.P.’s commercial says Bev Perdue, the lieutenant governor, and Richard Moore, the state treasurer — both of whom are seeking the Democratic nomination in North Carolina for governor — and have endorsed Mr. Obama should “know better.”

“He’s too extreme for North Carolina,” the narrator says.

As a native of the Tarheel state, I'm familiar enough with the mentality there to know that this sort of ad will absolutely work. And that's a large part of why I no longer live in NC.

Here's the commercial.



I suppose all this is fair game obviously. The G.O.P. is playing the old guilt by association card and trying to smear any person who endorses Obama by implying that by proxy, these folks are racist haters of American ideals.

I'm sure Sean Hannity is somewhere with an erection right now.[||]

This shouldn't be too surprising. The Republicans are the party of Lincoln and Willie Horton, so this is really just par for the course. Nonetheless, folks wouldn't run these sorts of ads if there weren't people dumb enough to believe their messages and vote in kind. So, get used to it.

Question: Is there any way Obama can mitigate the Reverend Wright damage? Does it even matter at this point, since people's minds have already been made up?

N.C. Republicans Preview Wright-Obama Ad [NYTimes]