A leading contender to become chairman of the Republican Party has left senior officials horrified after he distributed a CD featuring a parody song called Barack the Magic Negro.

At a time when the party seeks to recover from heavy electoral defeats in November - and amid calls that it should reach out to younger and ethnically diverse voters - the emergence of the parody, sung to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon, has left many Republicans cringing.

Chip Saltsman, a former leader of Tennessee Republicans, who is seeking to take over the party's national committee, sent the CD to party members as a Christmas gift. But unlike him, few found it funny.

The ditty, written by Paul Shanklin, a conservative parodist, alludes to an opinion piece penned by the black writer David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times last year headlined “Obama the Magic Negro”. In the article the author argued that voting for the “warm and unthreatening” Mr Obama helped whites to alleviate guilt over the country's past racial injustices. The song has been played by Rush Limbaugh on his conservative talk radio show. “Barack the Magic Negro,” it begins, “made guilty whites feel good/They'll vote for him and not for me/Cos he's not from the hood.”

The outgoing chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, said he was “shocked and appalled” by the lyrics, adding: “The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. [This] clearly does not move us in the right direction.”

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker, was similarly outraged: “This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it,” he said.

Mr Saltsman, who managed Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, was unrepentant, calling on Republican leaders to defend the CD. Members of the national committee, he said, had the “good humour and sense” to see the song as one of several “lighthearted political parodies”.

Two other contenders to become the Republican's national chairman are black. One, Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio Secretary of State, said that there was “hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race” and described other contenders for the leadership post as “fine people”.

After widespread condemnation Mr Saltsman accused Democrats of double standards. “Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media didn't utter a word about Ehrenstein's column. Now they're shocked and appalled by its parody on The Rush Limbaugh Show.

“I believe that we must welcome all Americans into our party and that the road to Republican resurgence begins with unity, not division. But I know that our party leaders should stand up against the media's double standards,” he said. There are no black Republicans in Congress, and the controversy highlights the difficulty the party has over taking on Mr Obama without appearing to be racist.

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