NBC's Today correspondents on Tuesday made sure to underline that Republicans were seen as racist in the Senate campaigns in Tennessee and Virginia. Reporter Tom Costello began his report:
"Matt, good morning. This has been a hard fought race. It's been injected with advertisements viewed by many as being racist by the Republican National Committee. The Corker campaign repudiated those ads, as did the Ford campaign, of course."
By many? Try "by many Democrats," at least. From there, David Shuster (usually assigned to Chris Matthews on MSNBC), also underlined the alleged-racist angle on the Virginia race:
"Meredith, good morning. A statistical dead heat is not at all where the incumbent Republican George Allen ever thought he would be. Allen had been talked about being a presidential contender in 2008 but his campaign has been set back by a series of missteps including his use of the term macaca and allegations about his use of the N-word to describe blacks, but the key issue in this race has been the Iraq war...
Shuster then finished out the report by underlining Jim Webb's military credentials and how Iraq is the number one issue:
"The Democrat in this race, Jim Webb, former Navy Secretary for Ronald Reagan, Webb served in Vietnam. He also has a son serving in Iraq. He has made Iraq the central issue. He has said that it is time for a change of course and for all the other issues including economic issues and jobs, Iraq is the number one issue in this campaign here in Virginia and now we'll finally find out, according to the pollsters just how angry voters here in the Commonwealth of Virginia are about the Iraq war and about President Bush and his supporters. Meredith."
