Is Mitt Romney running a 'racialized' campaign?
OPINION - Romney said this election would be about jobs, but continually took hard right stances during the primary that played right into the hands of racial resentment and xenophobia...
This isn’t the campaign we were told we would have, though we should have seen it coming. Romney said this election would be about jobs, but continually took hard right stances during the primary, most notably his immigration policy of “self-deportation,” that played right into the hands of racial resentment and xenophobia.
Polling at 0 percent among black voters and less than 30 percent among Hispanics, Romney has to make up ground by pulling in at least 61 percent of the white vote, more than any other Republican candidate has won since Ronald Reagan.
He has calculated that it’s useless to court the moderate white voters, and is now trying to appeal to the more racist element of his party in hopes that they will turn out in large numbers and push him over the edge. It’s the desperation of man and a party trying to cling to an old idea of America and refusing to accept that it simply isn’t coming back. They don’t seem concerned about the future of the party and how they will court the shifting demographics and remain viable down the line. They’re grasping at the one chance they feel they have left.
When this type of racialized rhetoric emerged during the 2008 election, then-nominee Sen. John McCain, after some initial flirtation with it, decided it wasn’t the way he’d like to run his campaign.
While his running mate and eventual half term governor Sarah Palin embraced it fully, the man at the top of the ticket wanted to stay above the fray. He lost, and since some in the Republican party have posited that it was because of his unwillingness to attack Obama on these grounds. But McCain gambled in order to keep his integrity. It appears Romney isn’t willing to take that chance.
Follow Mychal Denzel Smith on Twitter at @mychalsmith
