The Republicans Like to Pretend They're Above Dog Whistlin'

Unfortunately, we know better. Jonathan Capehart brilliantly recounts the Republicans' sins in this area:-

So much for the selection of Paul Ryan as the veep nominee as the end of the petty bickering and the start of the campaign of “big ideas.”Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul claims that “President Obama’s campaign keeps sinking lower.” What was the offense? Vice President Biden said the word “chains.”

In tone and bite, Biden is to the Obama campaign what John Sununu is to the Romney campaign. Only the vice president is polished and likeable. Biden was speaking at a Virginia rally that the Associated Press reports “included hundreds of black people,” and he warned the assembled that Romney wanted to do away with the post-2008 regulations on Wall Street. “Unchain Wall Street,” Biden said. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” Yeah, that was wince-worthy. It shall join all the others on the Biden blooper reel. But the high dudgeon of the Romney campaign is rather precious. 

This is the campaign that seemed perfectly fine with Sununu saying he wished the president “would learn to be an American.”

This is the campaign that continues to be a-okay with supporter Donald Trump’s racist birtherism.

This is the campaign that has been mute in the face of Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) hyperbolic assertion that Obama would “rather you be his slave.”

This is the campaign that is allowing Newt Gingrich to host “Newt University” at the Tampa convention this month. The former House speaker is fond of calling Obama a “food stamp president.”A wicked phrase that has more racial baggage than a klansman’s El Camino.

This is the campaign of the candidate who uttered the equally racially fraught “if they want more stuff from government ... more free stuff”when talking to supporters in Montana about what he told the NAACP about his desire to repeal Obamacare.

This is the campaign that is running a completely dishonest ad about the Obama administration’s welfare policy. “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check,” the narrator says before the obligatory“I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message” sign-off.

And, by the way,  this is the campaign of the candidate who could only muster, “[I]t’s not the language I would have used” after Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut,” a “prostitute” and much worse on his radio show. Her offense? Testifying before Congress in favor of employer coverage of birth control in health-care plans.

So, rather than rail against what they claim is Obama’s “desperate campaign based on division and demonization,” the Romney campaign and Romney himself ought to spend more time cleaning up the garbage littering their glass house. 

As far as their faux indignation and attempt to take the moral high ground is concerned, I would simply say it's more a case of the pot calling the kettle black.