The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the conspiracy-spouting crackpot who was once Barack Obama's pastor, has been the subject of 39 letters to the editor of this newspaper, plus hundreds of online comments and Spout Off submissions. His rhetoric has been discussed and debated on this page for four years. He is well known to anyone who follows national politics.

So we were astonished when The New York Times reported last week that Republicans were mulling a party strategist's 54-page blueprint for hammering President Obama with the Wright story. The plan argued that the Rev. Wright's flapdoodle was so outrageous that trumpeting the stuff in a $10 million ad campaign would demolish the president's bid for re-election.

Wrong. Everybody — everybody who cares, anyway — is already familiar with the Rev. Wright. His absurd sermonizing was thoroughly hashed out in '08. Obama has long since quit Wright's church. Been there, done that.

Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican nominee, spurned the plan to re-inject the Rev. Wright into the race. "I want to make it very clear," he said. "I repudiate that effort. ... I hope that our campaigns can be respectively about the future and about issues and about vision for America."

Some pundits praised Mr. Romney's stand as a bold rejection of race-baiting politics.

Wrong again. Romney's stand was lukewarm at best. At worst, it merely echoed Sen. John McCain's rejection of essentially the same plan four years ago.

And besides, Mr. Romney knows he can say "No!" a thousand times, but the Wright strategy won't go away. As The Associated Press reported: "With super PACs operating under significantly looser campaign finance restrictions than in past presidential contests, there was no guarantee Romney's words would be heeded by other groups eager to make Wright — and, by extension, race — a factor in the campaign."

In her column today, Kathleen Parker notes that Obama has a record as president and can be challenged on that record. That's where the GOP should concentrate its firepower, not on a "controversy" that was stale by the time Obama took office.

REPRINTED FROM THE NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS