Rev. Jesse Jackson said Monday that Mitt Romney’s widely discredited campaign ad charging President Obama with a plan “to gut welfare reform” figured into a larger Republican plan aimed at furthering racist stereotypes and painting Obama as extremist.
“I think it is speaking in code,” Jackson told National Journal during a brief interview Monday. “It is building on the Reagan welfare queen stereotype.”
“It's not an isolated statement, it's a plan,” Jackson said, calling the ad of a piece with criticisms of the Obama from a larger conservative chorus, which Jackson listed as “You were not born here, you’re a liar, food-stamp president.”
Independent fact-checkers have roundly criticized the Romney ad because the new policy offers states flexibility in meeting work requirements only if they can show their plan would move more people into jobs. The policy does not change time limits on benefits imposed in the 1996 welfare reform law.
Jackson said the Romney ad was “consistent with voter suppression, stereotyping.”
Get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox. Sign up for National Journal's morning alert, Wake-Up Call, and afternoon newsletter, The Edge. Subscribe here.
Leave A Comment