Quote of the Day - Rethug Race-Baiting Edition

Chris Matthews on "Morning Joe" delivering a smack-down to smug Rethug National Chairman Reince "Prepuce" Priebus on the Romney campaign's birfer/ welfare race-baiting:

“You can play your games and giggle about it but the fact is your side playing that card. When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you’re playing and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s a race card and yeah, if your name’s Romney, yeah you were well born, you went to prep school, yeah, brag about it. This guy has an African name and he’s got to live with it. Look who’s gone further in their life. Who was born on third base? Making fun of the guy’s birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue except for the right wing.”

Going down this road seems to be the latest strategy for Willard's desperate campaign. He needs to get the low-information white working class voters to line up behind the despicably and demonstrably false ideas that Obama is somehow "foreign" and giving away the store to "welfare queens." It's "Willie Horton" and the Southern Strategy 3.0. Coupled with their efforts to suppress minority voting in a number of key states, the Rethuglicans appear to be going all-in on their cynically race-based, win at all costs plans, with a cowed media dutifully issuing cautions about "tone" and "civility," while reporting from the sidelines that "both sides do it."

BONUS: What Michael Tomasky says.

"The Caucasian Card"

Newsweek's Anna Quindlen has an article on the "race card" issue that's well worth reading. Without summarizing it here, the term "playing the race card" has been used as a perjorative to indicate that an African American is using his or her race to obtain an advantage in an argument, etc. The "Caucasian Card," which is what Quindlen says McSame and his handlers have been playing, is the flip side. It's a perceptive article.