Cole Says Race Has No Place In NRCC's Fall Strategy

Tue. Apr. 29, 2008


On the same day that Mississippi Republican House candidate Greg Davis unveiled a television advertisement reminding voters of ties between Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole said the NRCC does not plan to incorporate race into its fall strategy.

“You have to be very careful in this; we have to be careful,” Cole said of Wright and race Monday morning after a briefing in which Cole said he hopes to nationalize congressional races because he believes ideology gives the GOP a leg up in the presidential race.

“Calling Barack Obama a liberal does not make you a racist, but he is a liberal,” he said. “Race is a reality, but it’s not something that ought to be used or exploited.”

While Cole was speaking near the Capitol, Wright was a few miles away, defending his sermons and parrying what he views as attacks on black churches in a speech at the National Press Club.

Cole said there is, indeed, a “racial component to voting.” He added, “I understand that, and I appreciate that, but there’s a difference between racial components in voting and playing the race card,” he said. “And I’m comfortably certain that this committee has not and will not do that.”

Others have not been so reticent, and some observers expect race to be a factor in the election.

“House Republicans have a disastrous brand, no ideas, and are on the wrong side of the war and the economic issues middle-class Americans care most about,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Doug Thornell said. “Republicans and their 527 allies are desperate and will sink to any level to distort Democrats’ records.”

Earlier this month, in a preview of what some say might become the “Swift Boat” attacks of this election cycle, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Obama in a debate, “If you get the nomination, what will you do when those sermons are played on television again and again and again?”

A week later, the Associated Press reported that the North Carolina Republican Party fielded calls from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He urged the party not to air a spot that called Obama “too extreme for North Carolina” and used a clip from one of Wright’s sermons and a photo of Obama and Wright together to try to undercut two Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls in the state.

In Mississippi, Davis’ ad links his Democratic opponent, Travers Childers, to Obama by saying: “Obama says Childers will put progress before politics. But when Obama’s pastor cursed America, blaming us for 9/11, Childers said nothing. When Obama ridiculed rural folks for clinging to guns and religion, Childers said nothing.”

The NRCC has its own ad on the air; it tries to sink Childers by associating him with the liberal records of Obama, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and House Speaker Pelosi.

“We think Obama has got problems because he’s too liberal and too inexperienced to be president of the United States. And we think we can make that argument pretty effectively, and we think the American people will respond to that pretty effectively,” Cole said. “I think if you try to go beyond that, you risk overdoing it. People will rightly reject any obvious, any real attempt to use race.”

Cole spent much of his briefing discussing the effect of the presidential race on congressional elections, because the money and effort being poured into the White House battle will “dwarf” efforts down the ballot. He spent time complimenting Obama for his toughness and political skill but repeated his assertion that he is a weaker candidate than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

by Erin McPike

Tue. Apr. 29, 2008