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Barack Milhous Obama

Posted by B. Daniel Blatt at 12:30 am - January 26, 2012.
Filed under: 2012 Presidential Election,Democratic Dirty Tricks,Media Bias

“Can you imagine,” Hugh Hewitt asks, “if George Bush had told Karl Rove to get Howard Dean nominated and to spend millions to do so?”

The blogger cites a story in the Orlando Sentinel which would have gotten national attention had the incumbent’s much maligned predecessor done just that:

The Democrats are targeting Mitt Romney as if he were already the Republican nominee running against President Barack Obama, with campaign ads, Internet videos, daily news conferences and dozens of news releases attacking the former Massachusetts governor.

Traditional Democratic partners are jumping in, too. Both theAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ and Service Employees International Union’s political-action committees are running their own TV commercials in Florida this week — attacking Romney.

Gingrich and the other two Republican candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas U.S.Rep.Ron Paul, are being all but ignored by the DNC and its allies. Instead, they’re hammering Romney harder even than his rivals are, paying for TV and radio ads saying that Romney changes his positions on issues such as abortion; that his hard-line positions on immigration would be “devastating” to Hispanics in a state full of them; that his business record was characterized by “greed.”

Hugh contends that “Obama fears Romney so he is trying to eliminate him early“, adding that “In the old days it would be called a ‘dirty trick,’ but MSM loves the president and won’t criticize his operation.”

Via Powerline where Scott Johnson observes that Sentinel reporter Scott Powers compares this tactic to Richard Nixon’s reelection strategy in 1972, quipping that “When the shenanigans of Nixon’s crew were exposed . . . , I seem to recall that they were held out as something of a scandal“.  Scott, that’s because when Republicans do such thing, they are scandals.   When Democrats do them, well, they’re just not newsworthy.

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9 Comments

  1. Well I wasn’t around in 1972, but if the Democrats in ’72 were dumb enough to pick the candidate Nixon wanted them to, they deserved everything they got. Same goes this cycle for the Republicans. If Obama wants to face Gingrich and you pick Gingrich for him, then you fully deserve whatever happens on election day 2012.

    Comment by Serenity — January 26, 2012 @ 4:18 am - January 26, 2012

  2. I believe this will backfire in the form of Newt Gingrich. Didn’t Carter want Reagan in 1980 also? How well did that turn out?

    Comment by Sebastian Shaw — January 26, 2012 @ 11:07 am - January 26, 2012

  3. Yes, because Gingrich is just like Reagan:

    But not Newt Gingrich. He voted with the caucus, but his words should be remembered, for at the height of the bitter struggle with the Democratic leadership Gingrich chose to attack . . . Reagan.

    The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.” Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

    Gingrich scorned Reagan’s speeches, which moved a party and then a nation, because “the president of the United States cannot discipline himself to use the correct language.” In Afghanistan, Reagan’s policy was marked by “impotence [and] incompetence.” Thus Gingrich concluded as he surveyed five years of Reagan in power that “we have been losing the struggle with the Soviet empire.” Reagan did not know what he was doing, and “it is precisely at the vision and strategy levels that the Soviet empire today is superior to the free world.”

    I’m constantly amazed at how the American right manages to idolize Reagan when the man himself was subjected to such scorn by contemporary conservatives.

    Comment by Serenity — January 26, 2012 @ 2:44 pm - January 26, 2012

  4. And we’re constantly amazed at how desperately you try to pick fights and antagonize people, silly imbecile.

    You betray the problem. You worship Obama as your Messiah and descend into a screaming fit when anyone dares question him. Hence, you project that onto conservatives; because you are incapable of honest disagreement, you are certain that conservatives cannot either.

    You really are quite emotionally and intellectually retarded. But that’s no surprise, Pomposity; you are the product of a socially- and morally-bankrupt system that rewards failure and punishes initiative in the name of “equality”. You were never taught to think well because not everyone can. You were never taught to behave well because not everyone can. And since you have never been taught to think or behave, you assume everyone else is subject to the same violent fits, absence of control, and inability to take responsibility for your actions that you are.

    Comment by North Dallas Thirty — January 26, 2012 @ 6:59 pm - January 26, 2012

  5. I’m constantly amazed at how the American right manages to idolize Reagan when the man himself was subjected to such scorn by contemporary conservatives.

    You seem to be under the impression that Newt Gingrich is a conservative.

    Comment by Rattlesnake — January 26, 2012 @ 8:22 pm - January 26, 2012

  6. You seem to be under the impression that Newt Gingrich is a conservative.

    Maybe he isn’t. But given his polling numbers among Republicans, it’s not me you’ve got to convince.

    Comment by Serenity — January 27, 2012 @ 9:46 am - January 27, 2012

  7. Maybe he isn’t. But given his polling numbers among Republicans, it’s not me you’ve got to convince.

    It’s not like there is a conservative in the Republican field. He may not be a conservative, but neither is Romney, Santorum, nor Ron Paul.

    Comment by Rattlesnake — January 27, 2012 @ 3:38 pm - January 27, 2012

  8. It’s not like there is a conservative in the Republican field. He may not be a conservative, but neither is Romney, Santorum, nor Ron Paul.

    Wow, now I’m curious. Can you actually name someone who is a conservative by your definition then?

    Comment by Serenity — January 27, 2012 @ 5:31 pm - January 27, 2012

  9. Well, Romney and Gingrich are RINOs. Santorum is a “compassionate conservative” like Bush (or in other words, a RINO), and Ron Paul is some sort of crazy hybrid between a radical libertarian and a radical paleoconservative. A conservative, by my definition, would be someone like Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, or Paul Ryan.

    Comment by Rattlesnake — January 27, 2012 @ 6:41 pm - January 27, 2012

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