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Report: GOP Super PAC Planned Ads Tying Obama to Pastor

HeadlineMay 18, 2012

The New York Times has revealed a Republican super PAC has planned an ad campaign that would revive the effort to link President Obama to his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Soundbites of Wright’s sermons became a dominant staple of the 2008 campaign when Republicans tried to associate Obama with Wright’s denunciations of U.S. foreign policy and its record on civil rights. A newly disclosed plan shows strategists with the “Ending Spending Action Fund” writing: “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.” The Times reported a proposal for the $10 million plan had been commissioned by the billionaire Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. But following denunciations by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and others, a spokesperson for Ricketts disavowed the campaign, saying it “reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted, but only a suggestion for a direction to take.”

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