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Apparently, being a black, well-groomed version of one of America's most beloved presidents is a bad thing. And along with a lot of chickens and Reverend Jeremiah Wright--it's the skeleton of a conservative Super PAC's $10 million attack plan.
We're totally with you if all those sound a bit weird, but that's actually all in an advertisement commissioned by TD Ameritrade founder (and DNA Info founder and CEO) Joe Ricketts and obtained by The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg who published the story and portions of the storyboard online today. Zeleny and Rutenberg explain that odd metrosexual reference (yes, apparently the GOP still uses this metrosexual as a slur) as follows:
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.”
The plan is designed for maximum impact, far beyond a typical $10 million television advertising campaign. It calls for full-page newspaper advertisements featuring a comment Mr. Wright made the Sunday after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he said.
“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” campaign manager Matt Rhoades said. “It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called “Ricketts Plan” to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning. Not only was this plan merely a proposal – one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors – but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.
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