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Friday 31 August 2012
Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card

Before explaining why these tactics work (and why Romney’s team knows, or should know, they are playing the race card), let’s quickly deal with this fact: The ad is wrong. As countless impartial fact-checkers have noted, the Obama administration memo cited by the Romney team actually gives states flexibility to find better ways of getting welfare recipients into jobs.

Why ignore fact-checkers? First, internal GOP polling and focus groups offer convincing evidence that the welfare ad is hurting Obama. Second, the welfare issue, generally speaking, triggers anger in white blue-collar voters that is easily directed toward Democrats. This information comes from senior GOP strategists who have worked both for President Bush and Romney. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

Furthermore, a senior GOP pollster said he has shared with the Romney camp surveys showing that white working-class voters who backed Obama in 2008 have moved to Romney in recent weeks “almost certainly because of the welfare ad. We’re talking a (percentage) point or two, but that could be significant.”

More broadly, racial prejudices and tensions are a factor in many voters’ decisions.

In the final months of Obama’s history-making 2008 campaign, The Associated Press conducted a series of polls and surveys that uncovered deep-seated racial misgivings costing Obama significant votes. The study, conducted with Stanford University, suggested that the percentage of voters who might reject Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the difference between the margin of President Bush’s 2004 victory – about 2.5 percentage points.

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    Jesse Helms would be proud.
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