The perils of running against a fantasy version of Obama
The perils of running against a fantasy version of Obama
By Jonathan Bernstein
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Think about the two Barack Obamas that Republicans are running against. One of them is basically a fraud; he’s never held a job before he somehow wound up the Democratic nominee in 2008. Or, as Mitt Romney asserted today: “It’s hard to create a job if you never had one.” Oh, and he’s entirely dependent on a teleprompter.
The other Obama is the scheming, nefarious, stealth left-winger who any day now is going to unleash his radical socialist agenda. This Obama requires Republicans and conservative to chase down every radical “association” and every allegedly radical thing he’s ever said, no matter how mild.
As many have noted, these two Obamas are somewhat at odds with each other. But the more important point is that neither version builds a convincing case against supporting Obama in 2012. No one is going to buy that Obama is too inexperienced to be president; no one is going to buy that he has some secret agenda that remained secret during four years in the White House.
But Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field has have spent three years now speaking only to confirmed Republican voters. And those voters live in the world where reality is defined by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, in which all of that stuff makes perfect sense. Even worse, the candidates and their operatives themselves live in that world, or at least spend an awful lot of time there. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Romney campaign believes (on some level) that Obama never held a job in his life before mysteriously winding up as president, or that he can’t get through a debate without a teleprompter.
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By Jonathan Bernstein | 12:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-perils-of-running-against-a-fantasy-version-of-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAfMbeGS_blog.html
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