Mitt Romney, with one of two teleprompters he used to deliver his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary

One of Sarah Palin’s favorite digs at Pres. Obama is that he often reads speeches from teleprompters.

If you are a liberal or not a political junkie, you probably found Palin’s harping on Obama’s use of teleprompters confusing. “So what?” you may have said to yourself. “So did Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton. They all do it.”

Or, if you were paying close attention to Obama on the campaign trail, you might have noticed that he hosted dozens of town hall events during which he spoke extemporaneously for 90 minutes or more. (For teavangelical types who may be reading this, “extemporaneously” means “without the aid of a teleprompter.”)

What liberals and other regular Americans were missing in Palin’s sneering about Obama and teleprompters was a dog whistle message to the Republican Party’s half-witted racist base. What she was really saying was, “Pssst. See, he’s black, so not smart enough to think up all those big words on his own. He only got where he is because of affirmative action.”

Reality has a left-wing bias, as Stephen Colbert has said, so it did not matter that Palin — who, pssst, really is a dumbass — used teleprompters just about every time she spoke in public during her failed vice presidential run in 2008. (For your convenience — and, we can only hope, to make tea baggers heads explode — we have compiled a photo set of about two dozen different events in which Palin read her speeches from teleprompters and posted it here.)

In the current campaign, after making some seriously stupid gaffes while campaigning in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney took no chances when it came time to read his victory speech last night, according to his hometown paper, the Boston Globe:

Romney spoke using a TelePrompTer, the speechmaking device that projects a text on glass panels so a speaker can look at his audience while his remarks scroll in front of his eyes.

Republicans love to deride Obama for using one for even the most mundane of remarks, but a TelePrompTer’s presence signals a person isn’t just speaking, but sending a message.

But, as noted, the GOP’s Obama-teleprompter sneers were really only coded racism, so don’t expect criticism of Romney for using a teleprompter from Sarah Palin or any of her fellow hypocrites on the right.