a headline that I first found worrying, then comical

This is the headline, from the NY Times:

“G.O.P. ‘Super PAC’ Weighs Hard-Line Attack on Obama”

And you first think, “uh-oh, we know these guys are capable of anything.”

But then you read quotes like this:

“The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

‘The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,’ says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.”

If they do this, then they’re really at sea strategically.

In 2008, this might have been a successful scare strategy. Obama hadn’t been in the Senate all that long and had only come to the attention of the wider American public for the first time in 2004, only 4 years earlier. And yes, it seemed like a big radical gesture to elect a black President, and some borderline voters might have gotten cold feet.

But seriously, is there any chance in 2012 of persuading the American public that Barack Obama is a scary, dangerous, extremist black nationalist? It would be an exaggeration to say that I’m laughing out loud while typing these words, but I’m certainly smiling.

Heck, they may as well just try to challenge his citizenship again. It probably has a better chance than linking him to Jeremiah Wright.

There’s also the fact that Romney doesn’t seem to be entirely dirt-free, and if you throw the first stone, you’re going to get hit with the second stone, possibly a much bigger one.