Romney's race card and the GOP's new Southern Strategy

By Richard K. Barry

Chris Matthews can sometimes make me crazy, but I was proud of the man yesterday on Morning Joe when he called out RNC Chair Reince Priebus for the particular variant of the Southern Strategy being played out by the GOP with their lies about Obama's supposed changes to welfare rules and equally untrue statements about the reallocation of Medicare funding to Obamacare.

Nothing else is working for Romney, which is why he is playing the "race card," as Matthews correctly pointed out.

There is an excellent piece at The Atlantic Wire by Elspeth Reeve on this shift in strategy.

According to Reeve:

Romney's advisers believe Romney "needs a more combative footing against President Obama in order to appeal to white, working-class voters and to persuade them that he is the best answer to their economic frustrations," The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg reported. And as we pointed out on Friday, if Romney gets 61 percent of the white vote, he wins. If you have any doubt that Romney is playing the race card, check out his YouTube page. There are five ads falsely accusing Obama of gutting welfare reform. The Republican National Committee has put out its own welfare ad. And another three Romney ads say Obama is raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare. The latter ads show white faces and say "you paid in" but now health care is going to somebody else.

Here's Matthews's exchange with Priebus:

(Cross-posted at Lippmann`s Ghost.)