In a new installment from his "Ill Doctrine" series of videos, Jay Smooth discussed Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)'s speech to the NAACP and wondered exactly why the presumptive Republican nominee made his decision to address the group at all.
"Wow," said Smooth at the clip's opening, "It's been a big week for Mitt Romney pretending to be interested in black people."
He said that on the one hand, Romney's decision to address the NAACP's annual convention in Chicago could be seen as a genuine good faith outreach effort, except for one thing.
"Later that same day, he was on Fox News telling them that he expected to get booed when he made his half-hearted shot at Obama's health care reform," Smooth said, "and then later on in that same day when he was speaking to his base in Montana, Romney puffed out his chest and started bragging and boasting about how he told the NAACP crowd what time it was and how he didn't care if they liked it or not," making up details and saying he'd said things that he didn't (and wouldn't) say to the crowd's face.
Taken in that light, Romney's outreach effort look a lot less like good faith and more like a cynical political move to ingratiate himself with the Republican Party's racist wing.
Regardless, Smooth said, the situation didn't get long to simmer before it was pushed to the back burner by questions about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital. Romney's campaign tried to change the subject by floating a trial balloon about Condi Rice serving as the former Massachusetts governor's running mate, a move that Smooth wrote off as a cynical distraction. Rice, he said, is way too moderate on social issues to appeal to the GOP base.
The campaign, he said, was "grabbing Condoleezza Rice and throwing her on the floor like a smoke pellet so they could run out of the room," which, really, is pretty typical Republican strategy, treating women and minorities as props and 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards rather than actually thinking of them as equals.
That's two times in a week, though, that the Romney campaign has pretended to be interested in black people for political expediency. Related? Coincidence? You be the judge.
But if the campaign wants to try something new and crazy, Smooth said, maybe Romney should "try something completely whacky and being an honorable man and standing up to your party's voter suppression efforts."
Haha, Jay Smooth. Right.
Watch the clip, embedded via Vimeo, below:
