Crazy like a Fox (news)
by digby
This is a bad day for Mitt Romney what with being accused of potentially committing a felony for lying to the SEC and outsourcing to China and all, but for my money, this is the worst thing he’s said during the entire campaign:
By the way, I had the privilege of speaking today at the NAACP convention in Houston and I gave them the same speech I am giving you. I don’t give different speeches to different audiences alright. I gave them the same speech. When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren’t happy, I didn’t get the same response. That’s ok, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine. But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy-more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.
I don’t know why he didn’t just call Obama the “Food Stamp President” while he was at it. A lot of us immediately saw Mitt’s speech for what it was — a chance to show the racists among his base that he’s one of them and African Americans know it.
Yes, he couched in the idea that he says this to all audiences (which isn’t true, but he had said this before.) But he and his handlers aren’t fools and know that saying this to the NAACP carries a very different sort of freight. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Update: Michael Tomasky discusses the speech itself as obviously a ploy to turn the event into a Coretta Scott King funeral among the Freepers:
That speech wasn’t to the NAACP. It was to Rush Limbaugh. It was to Tea Party Nation. It was to Fox News…Romney and team obviously concluded that a little shower of boos was perfectly fine because the story “Romney Booed at NAACP” would jazz up their (very white) base.
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