The Romney campaign announced the formation of its Black Leadership Council and it contains some real doozies. It has three co-chairs: Rep. Tim Scott (R-NC), Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll. I don’t know much about Scott, but the other two have a very bad track record of lunacy and bigotry.
I’ve written a lot about Allen West, who is truly one of the craziest and dumbest men in Congress (and that’s a hell of a feat given the competition). He’s accused President Obama of trying to make people his slaves (apparently because food stamps are a form of slavery). He actually thinks early voting is unconstitutional. He claims that Congress is full of communists. And he says things that are so crazy — like claiming that the stock market was going up because investors were anticipating a Republican victory in November — that even Fox News hosts laugh at the idiocy.
And Jennifer Carroll, you might remember, is the woman who responded to accusations that she was having a lesbian affair by saying that women who look like her can’t be lesbians. That’s so idiotic and bigoted as to be mind-blowing.
Seriously, this is the best that Romney could find to help him reach out to black voters?
24 comments
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Gvlgeologist, FCD
September 7, 2012 at 1:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, he’s already at zero. The only possible direction is up.
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
September 7, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why does the phrase “Judas goat” keep popping into my head when I consider the Romney campaign’s Black Leadership Council?
Randomfactor
September 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I suppose they matched Romney’s mental image of his target audience.
slc1
September 7, 2012 at 2:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Zinc Avenger @ #2
Try Uncle Toms.
d cwilson
September 7, 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sadly, it probably was.
busterggi
September 7, 2012 at 2:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well Mitt is limited to choosing from Republicans.
keithb
September 7, 2012 at 2:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I hear that Michael Steele is looking for a job.
slc1
September 7, 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re keithb @ #7
Compared to Scott and West, Steele is almost sane.
Die Anyway
September 7, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As a Florida resident, it is sad to say that I had no idea who Jennifer Carroll is… that she is our Lt. Gov. nor what she looks like. I had to go look her up on the internet. So now I’ve seen her picture and read the articles about her statement and I don’t understand. To me she’s average looking, so was she saying she’s too pretty to be a lesbian or too ugly, or what? It’s nonsense anyway but I can’t even figure out where she was going with it.
And maybe it’s a good thing that Mitt loads his committees with bad choices. They’ll give him bad advice and he’ll go down in flames. Sounds ok to me.
Modusoperandi
September 7, 2012 at 3:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Big fish. Small pond.
slc1 “Compared to Scott and West, Steele is almost sane.”
Romney was looking for malevolence, not incompetence. I do miss the Daily Show’s Muppet version of him, though.
holytape
September 7, 2012 at 3:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You got to give him a little credit. Those three people are black, right? He hasn’t appointed an all white council of concerned citizens to deal with the black vote. It’s progress, isn’t it?
D. C. Sessions
September 7, 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In a way, yes. The marginal benefit to him of any efforts to woo black or Hispanic voters is negative: he’ll lose more of the bigoted votes he already has (to non-turnout, mostly) than he can possibly get from a futile effort to get more than four blacks to vote for him.
It’s the ethnic version of hippie punching.
Geds
September 7, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Die Anyway @9: So now I’ve seen her picture and read the articles about her statement and I don’t understand. To me she’s average looking, so was she saying she’s too pretty to be a lesbian or too ugly, or what? It’s nonsense anyway but I can’t even figure out where she was going with it.
My assumption is that she was saying, “Lookit me! I don’t wear flannel or have a mullet! And I’m feminine in my actions! How could I possibly be one of those lesbians?”
Because, y’know, everyone knows that all lesbians are auto mechanics and all gay guys are constantly fabulous in their feather boas and assless chaps…
stevenbandyk
September 7, 2012 at 4:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Interesting..
After just passing a link to an article chronicling over 500 lies Romney has told http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/08/29/mitt-romney-tells-533-lies-in-30-weeks-steve-benen-documents-them/
.. I followed the link to NewsMax and the thing that stuck out in scanning the quoted press release was a lie.
Unemployment rates are rising?
Nentuaby
September 7, 2012 at 5:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here’s a bigger chunk of Carroll’s statement:
It mostly seems to have been respectability politics. I.E. she’s old enough to be established, and clearly signals mainstream middle-to-upper classness by dress and hairstyling. Therefore she isn’t THAT type of black woman.
Artor
September 7, 2012 at 9:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Well, he’s already at zero. The only possible direction is up.”
Someone hasn’t been paying attention. Republicans at the bottom of a hole have mastered the art of digging deeper & deeper. I foresee worse blunders than this, by a long shot.
tbp1
September 7, 2012 at 11:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
AFAIC, any black person who would cozy up to the GOP is definitionally loony.
shripathikamath
September 8, 2012 at 12:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael Steele has a shred of dignity left, otherwise he’d join them.
But Herman Cain and Alan Keyes should be all over this.
Pierce R. Butler
September 8, 2012 at 10:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In other news, Condoleezza Rice is reportedly recovering from the fit of shrieking hysterical laughter to which she succumbed for unknown reasons backstage at the Republican National Convention, and doctors at Tampa General Hospital expressed cautious hope that she may be transferred from the Intensive Care Unit by early next week.
Despite a week of intravenous feeding, Bill Cosby’s sudden attack of continuous projectile regurgitation remains acute, physicians say.
Didaktylos
September 8, 2012 at 11:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
When Republicans reach rock bottom, they start digging. When the trench is big enough, they fill it with explosives and light the fuse …
Gvlgeologist, FCD
September 8, 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Artor:
Someone else hasn’t been paying attention. Romney’s poll numbers among African Americans is statistically zero, and that’s what I was referring to:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/23/159918270/one-poll-finds-zero-percent-of-blacks-support-romney
This, of course:
is another story, and we can only hope you’re right.
seabrook
September 8, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Small correction: I used to live in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district, which is Tim Scott’s territory–he’s (R-SC) not (R-NC).
seabrook
September 8, 2012 at 12:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tim Scott had the endorsement of the Tea Party in Charleston, but he’s not known for saying especially nutty things. He’s a fairly standard religious conservative. The only things of note I remember about his positions are that he is in favor of English being the official language of the government and that he is pretty actively anti-union and anti-worker.
blf
September 10, 2012 at 6:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, he’s already at zero. The only possible direction is up.
As others have pointed out, have a zero approval won’t stop the thugs from continuing to dig. With a power shovel.
The sheer awfulness of (at least two of)these loons might scare away a few people. A “Palin-effect” albeit probably on a rather small scale?