It’s not just Obama acolytes, to paraphrase George Will’s expression, who are convinced of the power of Obama’s “rhetorical gifts”. The man himself oftentimes seems certain that with just words alone he can change the power of a narrative. And yesterday, in the wake of his disastrous debate, he acted as if his words alone could change people’s minds about the Mitt Romney they saw on stage Wednesday night in Denver.
“Under fire from fellow Democrats,” reports the New York Times,
Mr. Obama came out swinging, accusing Mr. Romney of lying to the American people about his plans for the nation. “I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney,” Mr. Obama told 12,000 supporters during a lakeside rally. “But it couldn’t be Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy.[**] The fellow onstage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”
“The vigorous assault on Mr. Romney”, Mark Landler and Peter Baker added, “suggested just how worried Mr. Obama’s campaign has become.” Glenn Reynolds quipped, “I think [Obama would] be better off trying to persuade people that it wasn’t the real Barack Obama we saw” in the debate.
Seem Barack Obama thinks it unfair that Mitt Romney have the opportunity to define himself rather than let the Democrat do it for him.
RELATED: Obama comes out swinging after debate flop, Team Obama goes into emergency-restrategizing mode, Doubling down on the petulance (UPDATE: wherein Jennifer Rubin offers, “In the Obama mindset, because Romney’s actual plans differ from Obama’s stump speech version of those plans, Romney must be a liar.“)
*Post-debate.
**Obama spokesperson Stephanie “Cutter: Yeah, we’ve been lying about the $5 trillion we said Romney’s lying about“. John Hinderaker has more on what Ms. Cutter said.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin links some more insight into Democratic outrage about the world not conforming to their narrative, in particular Romney not comporting himself in manner consistent to their caricature:
Fiction. Democrats are annoyed that the Romney caricature didn’t show up at the debate, so now the real Romney is a “liar”: “What we’ve seen in the wake of the debate is that some on the Left are so wedded to their imaginary right-wingers that when their actual opponents advance positions or make arguments that are different from those imaginary ones they will call those actual opponents fakes and liars. They believed their own caricature of Mitt Romney, and his unwillingness to play into it strikes them as dishonest. Or put another way: Confronted with evidence of their own dishonesty about who Romney is and what he stands for, they call the evidence a lie.”
I think the media has played along with the Obama narrative on Romney, but Romney showed up and killed the narrative on Wednesday.
While some may buy the Obama and media narrative (those who are voting for Obama no matter what), I think it is hard to paint Romney back into that narrative for the majority of people who watched the debates.
Obama, being a typical leftist, doesn’t like it when people do things for themselves. That includes defining themselves. Like everything else, Obama can do that much better for Romney than he can himself (just like leftists in general can define conservatives better than conservatives can).
Obama is doing the Groucho Marx routine (Who you gonna’ believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?) for his followers. He has a bunker mentality and his handlers are lining him up where he will be praised and worshipped, although the crowds are dwindling.
The MSM is eventually going to be forced to transition to the reality that his magnetism has lost drawing power and that he is mainly just a memory of what could have been:
Oh, you’ve seen it all before
And heard the same lines,
But if you’re willing to take a chance
It could be all right, so fine
We’ll find ourselves dancing by firelight.
Obama can’t rekindle the flame. He is yesterday’s news. The old rope-a-dope of change and hope and hope and change and together we can and yes we can and can we just give it one more try to keep hope alive and pfffffffttttttttt.
That old dog is too tired and worn out to hunt. Time to pack it in. “Debates” amongst Progressives is never about facts. This debating conservative principle is really, really tough. Especially when feelings and declaring yourself superior don’t win any affirmative action points.