RNC Official: Dems Can't Get Detroit Voters Out of Pool Hall

Republican National Committee finance chief Ron Weiser is taking flak for a video secretly recorded at a Tea Party meeting in which he mocks Detroit voters and accuses them of fraud. In the video, which surfaced over the weekend, Weiser says Mitt Romney has a good chance of winning Michigan in November because without a strong mayoral machine in Detroit, "there's no machine to go to the pool halls and the barbershops and put those people on buses and then bus them from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times. And there's no machine to get 'em to stop playing pool and drinking beer in the pool hall. And it does make a difference."

Weiser, former chairman of the Michigan GOP, adds that Obama's get-out-the-vote operatives from outside Detroit wouldn't visit the city early in the day "without a side arm." Critics in turn accused Weiser of racist stereotyping, a charge he firmly denies, reports the Detroit Free Press. "I don't think there's anything negative about pool halls and barbershops. There are many other places I could have talked about that would have had negative connotations," he said. "Since when is it is a stereotype to talk about the fact people drink beer in pool halls?" (More Republican National Committee stories.)