The Republican Party paid a steep price for race-baiting in the presidential campaign. Remember the ferocious backlash against the California Republican group that produced a racist newsletter depicting Barack Obama on a food stamp, surrounded by images of fried chicken and watermelon?

Then there were those two congressmen who were rightly excoriated for condemning Mr. Obama’s candidacy in the language of the Jim Crow South  one describing him as a “boy” and the other as “uppity.”

We thought after all that  and, oh yes, losing the election  everyone in the Republican Party leadership would have figured out that race-baiting alienates young, minority and all reasonable voters.

Clearly, not everyone has.

Chip Saltsman, a veteran political operative, is pushing his candidacy for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He distributed a compact disc containing a parody questioning President-elect Barack Obama’s racial authenticity.