It's clear that Obama's re-election strategy is to demonize conservatives and his Republican opponents as extremists, "small," intolerant and morally deficient. That's a safer course, I suppose, than running on his miserable record.
Playing to his gay and lesbian audience, Obama took out his broad brush and smeared all the GOP presidential candidates in a speech at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner, saying the Republican contenders are "small" for "being silent when an American soldier is booed."
Obama was referring to an incident that occurred at the Republican presidential debate Sept. 22. When a YouTube question from a gay soldier was played asking the candidates their view about "don't ask, don't tell," booing could be heard in the audience.
Blogger Sarah Rumpf was in the audience only a few rows behind the "person" or, at most, "few people" who booed. Her version of what occurred is markedly different from the liberal media's spin.
Rumpf wrote: "The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, 'Shhhh!' 'No!' 'Shut up, you idiot!' etc."
The truth, however, didn't deter Obama from distorting the incident for political mileage. Obama said: "We don't believe in the kind of smallness that says it's OK for a stage full of political leaders -- one of whom could end up being the president of the United States -- being silent when an American soldier is booed. ... We don't believe in standing silent when that happens. ... You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient."
You see what Obama's doing here? He not only smeared the candidates for not attacking the audience, which, as it turns out, had itself already expressed its disapproval of the one or few who booed. By suggesting it would have been politically inconvenient for the candidates to condemn the people booing, Obama was implying that it would have hurt the candidates with most conservatives in the television audience had they criticized those booing. Obama, ever the uniter.
Obama expanded his "smallness" theme to encompass Republican opposition to his "jobs bill." He said, "I don't believe ... in a small America, where we let our roads crumble, we let our schools fall apart, where we stand by while teachers are laid off and science labs are shut down and kids are dropping out."
In Obama's world, only small Americans oppose spending our nation into bankruptcy on ineffectual and corrupt projects. Only small Americans believe in the restraints on government and safeguards for individual liberty written into the Constitution.
Obama is playing a similar tune. The Hill reports that his campaign sent a memo painting the Republican candidates as extremists who are trying to "win the hearts and minds of the Tea Party."
How are they extreme? They support tax cuts for the wealthy, health care reform repeal and Wall Street reform repeal. They are champions of big corporations and special interests instead of working families and the middle class.
Let me tell you what is really small and extreme.
For Obama to deliberately misrepresent what happened at the Republican debate is exceedingly small -- and unpresidential. What's small is for him to complain about our failing infrastructure when he wasted nearly a trillion dollars in a bill he rammed through ostensibly for the purpose of rebuilding it -- and threw it all away. What is beneath the dignity of his office is to smear an entire grass-roots organization as domestic terrorists and racists just because they are protesting his reckless spending policies.
What is extreme is for Obama to press for a $450 billion "jobs" bill on top of his already failed $868 billion "stimulus" bill on top of a $1.65 trillion deficit on top of a $14.8 trillion national debt. What's extreme is for Obama's administration to dole out billions more in federal money to quixotic green projects on the heels of the Solyndra scandal, for which he hasn't uttered as much as an explanation, much less an apology.
What's small, extreme and astonishingly audacious, even for Obama, is for his campaign's propaganda arm to state that the Republican presidential candidates "have embraced policies that the American people oppose." Oh, really? Since when did the American people's wishes concern Mr. Obamacare in the slightest?
After giving Obama the benefit of so many painful doubts, the American people know that he is the one who's an extremist. And Obama knows they know it; otherwise, he wouldn't have to be so "small" as to mischaracterize his opponents' views. He wouldn't have to lie about his policies.
Then again, if Obama were forthright about who and what he is, he'd suffer the worst landslide in presidential history.
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