honestly i think this may have been the most racist campaign ever.
well, i can't really speak about the pre-/post civil war era, but at least in the last 50 years and perhaps as far back as around 1890 or so.
just about everything the rmoney campaign did seemed to be designed to make people vote on the basis of bigotry.
republicans have long included dog whistles in their campaigns, but it reached a fever pitch in this election.
i think it's fair to lump in his dearth of policy specifics. challengers who want a mandate to change from the status quo invariably propose specifics to motivate their troops and build the argument against the "default" action, which is staying the course. reagan famously did this against carter and reagan's their idol. i think a large part of rmoney's lack of specifics was designed to leave no basis on which to vote other than bigotry.
you might say that, no, surely he was just trying to capitalize on the discontent with the economy, but no, if that were the case he would say exactly what he would do differently. and he really didn't. he danced around that area as politicians do, but he neither listed clear-cut specifics nor did he distill his program into a few simple points that he highlighted prominently during the campaign.
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The white people are looking for food - the black people doing the same thing are looting. 
We have a framed picture of our President Obama in our display case.
When people first walk into our home they will see it. Their first
reactions either vocal or not are always interesting and telling of a
person.
The Tikkis
We saw a lot of that this year with absolute creeps like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock running - and Rmoney actually endorsed one of them!!! 
Rape-publicans
Even Jesus is like "What the fuck is wrong with these clowns?" 
Reagan, Nixon, Strom Thrumond, Lee Atwater all come to mind. BUT, it was far too racist for 2012. That being said, I think the reaction to the loss was more racist than anything I've seen in a long time. Bill O'Reilly's comments were beyond the pale. 
but they were just one example.
Oh, and the attempts to suppress the minority vote was shameful. I was embarrassed, angry, and sad all at the same time. 
We went into other countries and shed our blood to give them the right to vote to democracy and here we were doing our best to keep people from voting. Business owners threatening workers, third world shit. We are hypocrites and the world watched.
