For years, conservatives have been split on whether President Barack Obama is incompetent or whether he is malicious. Mitt Romney ably made the argument for incompetence during the 2012 election cycle, when he stated that President Obama was. Romney's view symbolized the majority view on the issue.
Until now.
With the advent of sequestration, it is now clear that President Obama is willing to throw Americans under the bus in pursuit of his vision of a transformed America. He is more than content to break eggs to make his utopian omelet. That uncomfortable reality became clear during the sequestration debate when Obama showed zero predilection for actual negotiation, and instead decided to roam the countryside babbling about the End Times should the 2.4 percent reduction to future spending he originally proposed take place.
He framed himself with first responders, teachers and miscellaneous members of the Village People in order to promote the notion that budget cuts strike where it hurts. He trotted out his Department of Homeland Security to proclaim that budget cuts would mean freeing illegal immigrants. He trotted out his Secretary of Education to claim that teachers were already receiving pink slips.
Obama knew that his tactics would not achieve his supposed goal -- more targeted spending cuts rather than the heavy-handed broad-swath cuts automatically taking place under sequestration. But he knew that his tactics could help him achieve his real goal: casting all spending as vital, and all cuts as devastating.
With the implementation of sequestration, however, Obama now has a problem: The cuts will not devastate the American economy. In fact, they would help the economy if we pared away waste in government.
So now Obama has a choice: He can either help the economy and undercut his larger case for spending addiction, or he can cut where it hurts most.
He has chosen to cut where it hurts most. He hasn't chosen to cut the Transportation Security Administration's $50 million uniform makeover. He hasn't chosen to cut grants to develop robotic squirrels for use in research. He's reportedly chosen to cut Medicare funding, military pay, funding for air security, Navy patrols and border patrol agents. The sequestration cuts Obama will implement will hit the poor especially hard. These are the deeds of a man committed to making the American people pay for the sin of fiscal responsibility.
But will Americans buy it? Obama has the press on his side, a compliant media dedicated to painting him as a wronged leader desperately trying to save American jobs in the face of reckless Republican cuts. But Obama invented the sequester. Increasingly, Americans are realizing that the president they have on their hands is more than incompetent. He is ideologically driven to do harm to them, even when he could avoid doing so.