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Obama’s Dirty Campaigning Takes Unprecedented Turn
Posted by Jacob Laksin Bio ↓ on Aug 24th, 2012
Presidential nomination conventions traditionally have been governed by a ceasefire: Out of courtesy and tradition, the rival party yields the national stage to the nominating party. That tradition is now being cast aside by President Obama, who, along with his Democratic Party surrogates, is poised to launch what The Hill calls a “full-scale assault on Republicans” as they gather in Tampa, Florida, next week. Hope and change, meet slash and burn.
While Republicans will be officially nominating Mitt Romney, Democrats, led by Vice President Joe Biden, will converge on Tampa to condemn the GOP as the enemy of women and minorities. According to the Democratic National Committee, Democrats will focus on “how the Republican Party Mitt Romney is being nominated to lead is outside the mainstream on issues of importance to Americans — particularly as it relates to women, Hispanics and African-Americans.” President Obama meanwhile is set to stage high-profile rallies in key swing states. Even the First Lady will take part in the counter-convention campaign, with a scheduled appearance on the “David Letterman Show” timed to coincide with the nomination.
If such crude tactics seem a world away from the transcendent, post-partisan pitch of Obama’s 2008 campaign, they are by no means exceptional. As the country has soured on his leadership, Obama has beat a hasty retreat from his onetime promise to elevate the political debate. Not content to demonize Mitt Romney as a sinister corporate raider during his time at Bain Capital, the president and his campaign allies have tried to cast him as a criminal and worse. In July, for instance, Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter mused that Romney might be a “felon” who had lied to the Securities and Exchange Commission over his role at Bain Capital, despite having no evidence whatsoever that the charge might be true. Called to account for the smear at a recent press briefing, Obama insisted that “nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon,” a strained bit of linguistic parsing premised on the notion that groundless innuendo did not rise to the level of an accusation.
