This is apparent after the speeches given this week by President Obama. He takes aim at Rep Paul Ryan's budget and at Mitt Romney, the GOP primary front runner. For instance, there is this jewel from the president to the AP reporters luncheon gathering in Washington, D.C. : "It’s a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it's really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” Republicans are radical. Well, fiscal conservatism is a radically different approach to governance for Barack Obama.
On Tuesday, President Obama also said in a lunch with AP reporters, "The Republican budget, and the philosophy it represents is 'antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it'... It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism." The entire history of our nation? Social Darwinism? Wow. The ugly rhetoric is on overload mode from the speech writing team. What happened to the new tone we were suppose to all be a part of in politics?
The Wall Street Journal tore apart the ugly speech delivered by a campaigning Barack Obama before his very, very friendly audience - his cheerleaders in the media.
Did you hear about the GOP's red-in-tooth-and-claw plan for Medicare? Grandma and Gramps are going to be drafted for the Hunger Games.
Mr. Obama has been working Mediscare for the last year, but he is also debuting some new material, each layer thicker than the last. Modern Republicans are so radical that they oppose research and care for Alzheimer's, cancer, AIDS, autism and Down Syndrome, even as they want to deny education and food to children and their mothers. They want to pave over Yellowstone and backfill the Grand Canyon. But few tourists could get there anyway, because Republicans plan to shut down air traffic control too.
Because Republicans have criticized the Administration's torrent of costly new rules across the entire economy, therefore they favor returning to a state of regulatory nature, with no rules at all. Because Republicans oppose high-speed rail, therefore they would have opposed industrialization in the 19th century. They do plan to build a wayback machine to the Gilded Age, however, by handing a $150,000 check to every American millionaire, a million-dollar check to every billionaire, and a billion-dollar check to every trillionaire.
"This is not conjecture," Mr. Obama said. "I am not exaggerating. These are facts." Lest you think we exaggerate, read the transcript.
The list of untrue things that Mr. Obama wants Americans to believe is evidently so long that Mr. Obama associated himself with Republicans, albeit mostly dead Republicans like Lincoln and Eisenhower. For the first time we can recall, Mr. Obama even praised George W. Bush, of all people, because his predecessor created a new entitlement for prescription drugs. He also said Newt Gingrich showed how smart he was when he called Mr. Ryan's budget "radical" and "right-wing social engineering" last year.
All of this is a political fable carefully constructed to erase the record of the last three years and blame every current anxiety on a GOP House that has been in office for all of 14 months. The President claims to have "eliminated dozens of programs that weren't working," but the savings from these eliminations amount to less than 0.1% of the budget, or less than $100 million.
And, when Barack Obama says he is not exaggerating, you know that is exactly what he is doing. If it were not for straw men, the man would be rendered mute.
The man is on a roll. Two days, two speeches delivered against perceived conservative opposition to his agenda. First the Supreme Court and then the Ryan budget.
The last two days have revealed Mr. Obama at his least appealing—and least Presidential—first warning the Supreme Court not to dare overturn his health-care law, and now demonizing the motives of his political opposition. It is a long, long way from his "there's no red America, there's no blue America" stuff of 2004, much less the inspiration of 2008.
He sounds like a very petty, small man. Not the leader of the free world.
For another excellent analysis of the Tuesday speech, go HERE.
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