We thought we’d heard everything when it comes to attack ads, but how’s this for a jab at Mitt Romney?

A liberal group named American LP wants to remind primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire that Romney can speak French, and the group is airing an advertisement in those states showing Romney practicing his command of the foreign language.

The idea, apparently, is that red-meat conservatives who dislike French culture and politics will see Romney as an elitist Francophile.

We hope most voters won’t be that dumb. As journalist Josh Voorhees pointed out in Slate, New Hampshire “shares a border with Quebec, the Canadian province where a quarter of the population is of French and French-Canadian descent.”

Here in Louisiana, which was named after a French king and has a strong French heritage, we’ve spent a lot of time and effort to promote the French language. Even so, too many of us lack any kind of foreign language skill. That’s an especially troubling reality as the world economy becomes more global.

We should be doing all we can to promote fluency in foreign languages.

If candidates lose favor because they’re educated about the world, we shouldn’t be surprised when politics descends to the least common denominator.