John Sununu has once again thrown the Romney campaign off-message by introducing race into the campaign.
In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Sununu — who served as governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of Staff for George H.W. Bush, and is now a Romney campaign co-chair — explained former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of President Barack Obama by saying “Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”
The outburst was just the latest in a long string of racially charged statements from Sununu, who seems determined to be remembered as the least helpful campaign surrogate in history.
In July, Sununu explained that President Obama doesn’t understand the “American system,” essentially because he’s a stoner from Indonesia.
Later that day, Sununu took part in a conference call in which he reiterated that “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”
Sununu also sounded a racial dogwhistle after the first presidential debate, when he stunned NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell by declaring that President Obama is “lazy.”
Ironically, despite consistently embarrassing the Romney campaign and himself with his unapologetic race-baiting, Sununu believes that Democrats are the ones who are unfairly introducing race into the campaign. After Vice President Joe Biden used the imagery of chains in front of a primarily black audience, Sununu whined that “there’s going to be folks across the country that will try and take that as some kind of code word that is going to suggest that the Republicans are trying to be racial in their programs.” He would know.
