WE'VE GOT 99 PROBLEMS, BUT A RELUCTANCE TO CRAWL INTO THE GUTTER AIN'T ONE

There's a new series of pro-Republican ads aimed at minority voters. Here's how the anti-abortion site LifeNews.com describes one such ad:

Another hard-hitting ad features a man suggesting to a friend that he should consider telling his girlfriend to have an abortion, according to a New York Sun report. The second man responds that he doesn't approve of that request.

That is, to say the least, a paraphrase.

The Sun reports the exact words:

"If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," one of the men says.

"That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," the other replies.

"Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

Charming.

Over at the Huffington Post, Max Blumenthal tells us this:

This ad was financed by J. Patrick Rooney, a white billionaire notorious for funding several misleading anti-Kerry ads that ran on urban radio stations in 2004. The money for Rooney's newest ad flowed through a little-known group called America's PAC, which was founded by Richard Nadler, a veteran Republican consultant who pushed Intelligent Design in Kansas public schools, declaring, "Darwin is bunk."

But the Sun notes that its calls were referred to "a conservative, African-American talk show host who voiced some of the ads, Herman Cain." You may remember him:

Democrats are calling on Wal-Mart to repudiate a statement by a talk show host and Wal-Mart proponent likening the party's leading lawmakers to members of a terrorist group, Hezbollah.

In a column published Tuesday, the commentator, Herman Cain, repeatedly used the term "Hezbocrats." Mr. Cain defined them as "a roaming band of militant guerrillas seeking their party's 2008 nomination for president" and said they were lobbing "rhetorical bombs at Wal-Mart."....

Branded as "Hezbocrats" in the column were Senator Biden of Delaware, Senator Bayh of Indiana, and Senator Clinton, as well as Governor Richardson of New Mexico....

(The column is here. In fact, Cain refers to the entire party as "the Hezbocrat Party.")

The LifeNews story implies that Cain is behind the ads ("The ads are sponsored by America's PAC, a new organization founded by Herman Cain") -- but is that the case, or is the former Godfather's Pizza CEO and sometime substitute host for Neal Boortz and William Bennett merely the dark-skinned public face of people like this?

Nadler has an apparently dim view of the minorities he hopes to court. In 2000, he produced an ad in 2000 for school vouchers in which a white parent declared that his child's public school "was a bit more diversity than he could handle." The Republican National Committee flatly denounced that ad as "racist."

Either way, it's gutter politics, though I don't think it'll work.