EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Shortly after President Barack Obama was inaugurated, he said that his re-election effort will be judged largely on the economy.

The overall unemployment rate is above 8 percent; fewer than 150,000 jobs were created the last month; student loan debt has hit $1 trillion; consumer personal credit card debt is on the rise; gas prices look like a yo-yo; the housing industry continues to be stuck in the mud; and Americans still are unsure of what the future holds economically.

For Mitt Romney's team, that should look like fertile ground to lay a serious line of attack against the incumbent president, especially in hard-hit states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Nevada.

Yet for a band of GOP strategists, they somehow think trying to replay a bunch of old sermons by the president's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, will result in electoral gold.

Sounds more like fool's gold.

When I opened up Thursday's New York Times and saw a story at the top of the page about a proposal to Chicago billionaire Joe Ricketts calling on him to spend upwards of $10 million on a vicious attack on President Obama with Rev. Wright at the center of it, I frankly laughed.

Yep, busted out laughing in my Atlanta hotel room.

In fact, even former President Ronald Reagan came to mind and one of the all-time classic debate lines he used on Walter Mondale: "There you go again."

It's as if the butt-whippin' the GOP got in 2008 wasn't enough. Now they want to try to go to the well a second time.

D-U-M-B.

When Sen. John McCain declared tying Obama to Wright was off limits in 2008, GOP stalwarts seethed, angry that they couldn't portray the then-senator as an acolyte of who they considered to be a crazed, deranged pastor who hated America.

The revelations of his sermons by Rev. Wright caused a ruckus in the Democratic primary in 2008, dominating the news cycle for weeks. The only way Obama could have diffused the raging inferno was to deliver a speech on race in Philadelphia that was hailed by some commentators as momentous.

Ever since then, some in the GOP believe that had McCain bludgeoned Obama with Wright, he could have stood a better shot at winning.

To all of you who love and adore the Republican Party, I'll play your political priest and absolve you of all of your sins — said and unsaid — on this issue.

Making Wright a central campaign theme would have done nothing to keep McCain from beating Obama. And while Republicans like Sarah Palin and countless mouthpieces on the right swear that Obama wasn't properly vetted, just deal with the reality that your party lost in 2008.

Trying to drudge up Wright in 2012 simply won't do it. It's silly, childish, and frankly, shows a sign of desperation.

And this has nothing to do with riling President's Obama African American base or ticking off independent voters. It just doesn't make sense because what it does is take away the core message of Romney — the economy — and makes it about sermons from 20 years ago.

President Obama's weakness in 2012 isn't a sermon by Rev. Wright called "Confusing God and Government" — that's the one he was ripped for saying "goddamn America" — it's the weak economy and him as being the chief steward. When things are going well, a president gets the credit, and when not so good, he gets the blame. And right now, he's shouldering lots of blame for the economy.

Romney's team was quick to disavow the plan, and even Ricketts had to come out and say that it was one of many proposals that he was presented, and rejected it.

Now, Ricketts didn't become a billionaire by making dumb decisions. But even allowing this plan to cross his desk is about as dumb as Chase continuing to employ the folks that lost the firm more than $2 billion in a colossal trading screw-up.

Maybe we can just chalk the Obama-Wright proposal as an attempt by these GOP strategists to pull a fast one over Ricketts and make a quick buck off of an unsuspecting billionaire.

Even that thought has me laughing.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and author of the book "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House as Originally Reported by Roland S. Martin." Please visit his website at RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.