Everyone knows that there
is now unlimited PAC money in the Presidential campaign, and that very rich
people are writing huge checks to fund campaign ads against President
Obama. These ads will generally be the
traditional vicious attack ads, blaming Mr. Obama for every bad thing that he
inherited and did not fix. And in
addition to all of that it turns out a gazillionaire by the name of Joe
Ricketts was considering running $10 million of race related ads against Mr.
Obama.
The story was broken in
the New York Times
The
plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr.
Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.,
whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008
campaign.
“The world is about to
see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first
time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen
by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage
firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in
conservative politics.
The $10 million plan,
one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to
respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr.
Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as “black
liberation theology.”
The group suggested
hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who
can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the
proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”
Despite the fact that
this story looks like an old fashioned newspaper ‘scoop’,
A
copy of a detailed advertising plan was obtained by The New York Times through
a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone. It is
titled “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts
Plan to End His Spending for Good.”
it is the result of a deliberate leak by people who wanted to see what the
reaction would be to such a campaign.
And the so-called ‘scoop’ did what it was supposed to do. It generated a reaction of such disgust that
the plan is likely to be dropped. Of
course, a lot of the disgust is over the fact that the people involved in
proposing the plan are also looking
for mega bucks from the city of Chicago to subsidize their baseball club.
Cubs
Chairman Tom Ricketts, who has been pushing a plan to get government help in
rebuilding Wrigley Field, issued a statement distancing himself
and the organization from that plan.
“As
chairman of the Chicago Cubs, I repudiate any return to racially divisive
issues in this year’s presidential campaign or in any setting — like my father
has,” Tom Ricketts said in the statement. “I shall have no further comment on
this or any other election year political issue. My full-time focus is on
making the Chicago Cubs a World Series champion
preserving Wrigley Field and making the Chicago
Ricketts’
statement came as Mayor Rahm
Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, blasted the proposed political attack
on the president as an insult to the nation.
. . .
The Cubs are trying to work out a deal with the city that would involve using $150 million in city amusement taxes for a $300 million renovation of Wrigley Field.
The
presidential campaign issue was widely viewed as threatening to upend the
delicate talks between the family and city and state government. A mayoral aide
said Emanuel was furious when he read about the anti-Obama ad proposal.
At City Hall, it did not go unnoticed that part of
the Ricketts family is asking for taxpayer support while gearing up to spend
millions on a presidential campaign. The mayoral aide described that as
hypocritical.
So thanks to the
greed of very wealthy people who want their welfare from government the
country may be spared a bitter, divisive ugly race based ad campaign. Of course, this is not to say the torch of the KKK like campaign will not be taken up by another gazillionaire, one who does not need immediate government handouts and so can afford to offend and disgust.
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