MSNBC host Toure took the analysis of Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP earlier this week to a whole new level yesterday. Not only did he continue the Pelosi, “Romney wanted to get booed” line, but he also said Romney went to the NAACP not to impress black voters, but to gin up “white conservatives,” show white independents that he knew how to “talk down” to black people and to purposely offend them and make them boo. He also classified blacks as “ferocious animals.”
Why would he bother going to the NAACP convention to get booed? Because the real audience wasn’t in the room. He wanted to be booed by that black audience so that white conservatives — who still don’t see him as one of them — and white undecideds would see that he’s unafraid to talk down to black people, to offend them, to be their villain, to make them boo. The result is that he comes off looking tough or gains sympathy. Either way, he gets a soundbite that will bounce through the cable news echo chamber and elicit an emotional reaction from white voters. Romney’s performance wasn’t intended to win more black votes, it was intended to help win more white votes.
Tim Alberta of the conservative-leaning National Journal read Romney’s performance in heroic terms rarely applied to this candidate. “With the critical eyes of the political world resting squarely upon him, Romney marched defiantly into the lion’s den and delivered a speech that was direct, assertive and dispassionate,” Alberta wrote. So blacks, in this analogy, are ferocious wild animals who should be feared, only tameable by the most fearless of men, which, Romney supposedly proved he is by facing them down and talking tough.
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