Left-wing author Touré Neblett wildly accused Mitt Romney of playing the race card in a Thursday item on Time's website, claiming that Romney "went to the NAACP's National Convention planning to get booed," so he could "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."
Touré, the resident 9/11 truther at MSNBC, ranted that "when Romney called the Affordable Care Act 'Obamacare,' he purposely used a term that would not work with the audience in the room. When he said, 'If you want a President who'll make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. Take a look!' he was virtually taunting them the way a pro wrestler who's playing a villain eggs on the crowd saying things he knows will elicit boos."
The writer led his article, "Romney Plays The Race," with his accusation about the former Massachusetts governor, and cited liberal hero Nancy Pelosi as support: "Mitt Romney went to the NAACP’s National Convention planning to get booed. It was no mistake. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told Bloomberg TV she believes 'it was a calculated move on his part to get booed at the NAACP convention.'" He continued with his comparison of Romney to a pro-wrestler.
Touré then outlined the supposedly racial strategy behind Romney's speech:
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.
Get that? Use a common phrase about a hostile environment and the MSNBC host hints that you're a racist extremist. It should be pointed out that Touré himself absurdly played the race and homophobia cards against disco critics back in May 2012, and attacked former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for supposedly "giving comfort to racism" in November 2011. Talk about projection.
The writer even used the example of former President George W. Bush against Romney later in his piece. He also unsurprisingly went after the candidate's faith:
Republicans don't always treat the NAACP this way. When George W. Bush went to the convention in 2000 as a candidate for president he said respectfully, "The party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln," addressing why the GOP is not loved by black voters while nodding to the party's greatest racial justice achievement. Bush said, "Racism, despite all our progress, still exists," and spoke of racial profiling by police. He spoke to the people in the room, not using them to help himself — just as Joe Biden did a day after Romney's speech.
Romney's campaign is built around the idea that as a successful businessman he understands how to shape the economy to aid business and create jobs that will get this country going again. Okay, so why not tailor that message to lay out a plan to combat the black unemployment rate, which is 14.4%, almost double the white unemployment rate? He has said nothing about that. His Mormon faith is central to who he is, so why not speak to the Mormon Church's history of excluding blacks from the priesthood until 1978 when Romney was 31?
Apparently, the MSNBC denizen missed the part of the candidate's speech where he not only pointed out the high unemployment rate in the black community, but also laid out his plan for all middle class Americans immediately before and after his supposedly offensive ObamaCare reference. One might guess that Touré was too busy trying score political points against Romney to notice.
On Wednesday evening, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell forwarded his colleague's conspiracy theory on his program. Touré himself appeared during the segment and claimed that "he's [Romney] not saying he's racist, but he's saying 'the Republican party has been racist, but I am not.'"
