The leadership of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) is many things (dumber than a sack of hammers comes to mind), but one thing they do know how to do is stay on message. And like most Republican messaging, it matters little how true the message may be because as we’ve seen time and again, if they repeat a lie often enough, the American electorate will believe it.

The latest RPOF messaging blitzkrieg is aimed at bringing more African Americans into the GOP. To do this, they are closely aligning themselves with the group of reformers led by Abraham Lincoln who created the Republican Party in the 1850s. They are, of course, counting on Americans to A) not know their history and B) not bother to do the research to expose GOP lies.

The latest sally came in yesterday’s Miami Herald editorial section. In a letter to the editor headlined “Expose the racism in Democratic Party,” Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association from Sarasota questions a recent column by a Pulitzer Prize winner (and black man):

In his June 21 Issues & Ideas column, GOP blind to its race problem Leonard Pitts Jr. unfairly condemns the entire Republican Party as racist based on the actions of a few. In reality, the Republican Party, since its inception in 1854 as the antislavery party until today, has been the party of freedom and equality for blacks. A better case can be made that the Democratic Party is a racist party.

As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years, and their policies have turned those communities into economic and social wastelands.

Democrats fought to expand slavery, while Republicans fought to ban it. After the Civil War, Republicans amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom, citizenship and the right to vote. Republicans then passed the civil-rights laws of the 1860s that, sadly, were over turned by the Democrats with the Repeal Act of 1894 after they took over Congress in 1892.

Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen was instrumental to the passage of civil-rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. He wrote the language for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of the civil-rights legislation without the support of Republicans. Johnson’s statement about losing the South was not made out of a concern that racist Democrats would suddenly join the Republican Party. Instead, Johnson feared that the racist Democrats would again form a third party, such as the short-lived States Rights Democratic Party.

Democrats readily demean black professionals who do not toe the Democratic Party’s liberal line, denigrating them as ‘’sellouts” and ”Uncle Toms.” A Democrat blogger depicted RNC Chairman Michael Steele as a ”Simple Sambo” with a blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, thick red lips.

Condoleezza Rice was demeaned by a Democratic cartoonist as an ignorant, barefoot ”mammy.” Democrats Al Sharpton and Harry Belafonte denigrated Gen. Colin Powell and Rice as “house Negroes.”

Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy called some black judicial nominees, including Judge Janice Rogers Brown, ”Neanderthals.” Democratic Senator Harry Reid slurred Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as an ”embarrassment” who could not write properly.

Has Pitts condemned racism in the Democratic Party?

There are so many things wrong with this letter that it’s difficult to know where to start. Quoting ultraconservative Michael Scheuer to bolster your argument that the GOP is really the “big tent” party is just silly. Scheuer is, to put it bluntly, a crackpot in the Ron Paul tradition.

It is extremely dangerous (unless you’re confident that you won’t be called on it) to equate the current Republican Party with the party of Mr. Lincoln. Mainly because, though solidly antislavery, Lincoln and his cohorts did not believe that blacks were necessarily equal to whites, just that they should be afforded the same rights under the Constitution. Indeed, Lincoln did not want to abolish slavery; he sought to contain its spread, figuring that eventually it would just somehow die out.

That’s a long way from being a real booster for African Americans.

Sure, Everett Dirksen deserves to be recognized as a Republican who worked tirelessly to champion civil rights. By the same token, it must be noted that President Ronald Reagan’s administration worked just as tirelessly to roll back welfare and other social programs that were aimed at helping lower-income and poverty-stricken Americans — a majority of whom black.

And don’t you just love it when someone quotes a “Democrat blogger,” without naming him or her. I mean, if you’re going to quote them to bolster your argument, shouldn’t you name them or at least give a URL? Same with the unnamed “Democratic cartoonist.”

And sorry, but while Sharpton and Belefonte’s characterization of Colin Powell was in poor taste, it’s easy to find worse racist statements by the leader of the Republican Party — Rush Limbaugh: “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

I bet if we continued this pissing match all day, I’d find a lot more overtly racist statements from the Republican side than from Democrats. But that is not the point. The point is that the Republican Party of Florida is trying to recruit more African Americans by distorting facts and using bald-faced lies. One would hope by now after the “swiftboating” of John Kerry Dick Cheney’s weapons of mass destruction media tour that we as a people would wise up to the lies and the lying liars who tell them.

But after all, we all live in an idiocracy …..