Welcome to the Most Racist Election of Our Time

By Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

19 May 12

ll day yesterday, the pundits told us that exposure of the borderline obscene, nakedly racist advertising plan put together on the dime of millionnaire crackpot Joe Ricketts to resurrect that Jeremiah Wright issue for the 2012 campaign was going to drain allsimilar poisons from the election. Sunlight. Disinfectant. The whole thing.

Fat chance.

As much as it may harsh the mellow of Willard Romney, this kind of thing has become such an inherent part of the way his party does its business that he might as well decide that he no longer wants the Republicans represented by an elephant. The "Ricketts Plan" may be dead, but you've got career charlatan Ed Klein out there pimping his latest garbage. (Yesterday, Arianna's joint bit for Klein's claim that the Obamas were heading for divorce court after the president lost a congressional race to Bobby Rush. Klein's book is now called "controversial," which, of course, makes anything in it "newsworthy.") And Drudge went all red-light-alarmy this morning over a report that appears to be a misunderstanding involving the president's original literary agent.

This is likely going to be the most obviously racist presidential campaign the country has seen since people went out a'whispering about Warren Harding's black ancestry. Even if Willard Romney has the stones to unequivocally denounce the entire network dedicated to boosting this stuff into the mainstream, which he doesn't now and never will, he can't stop it. It's a feature of conservative politics, not a bug.