John Batchelor writes on his blog:
OFA reaps the whirlwind that it has sowed since June, with its witheringly powerful attack ads on Bain and on the Romney family finances, as Mitt Romney counter attacks by accusing Candidate Obama is a divider, not a uniter.
This is a well-known campaign trope, to accuse the other side of preaching division; and it has a long history of working in sharply contentious presidential elections. The other guy is an angry person who uses divisiveness to win an ugly, low turn-out election.
Was OFA ready for the Romney push back? Not clear.
David Axelrod tweeted sarcasm that suggested the word “anger” directed at his campaign irritated him enough to mock it. OFA has fallen into a lazy pattern of using the words “radical” and “extreme” so routinely and repetitively that they have lost much meaning — and when these modifiers are thrown at men as achingly polite as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan they sound silly.
I saw a tweet today on MSNBC, which they featured on the Chyron, that declared “Paul Ryan is a male Sarah Palin.” This is punchy trash-talk.
OFA asserts that RomneyRyan2012 is the “Go Back Team.” This is as half-cooked as the Sarah Palin disdain.
There is evidence (below) from Louisiana that Candidate Obama has spent too much time in fund-raisers with adoring rent-seekers and has lost touch with the campaign trail of impatient doubters. Obama asks for a “show of hands of how many folks are making more than three million dollars a year…” in order to justify his numbing recitation of tax margin increases that he insists are “fair.” This is purely agitprop trash talk. When one man raises his hand (it may be a jest), the president jokes that he is “lookin’ for a campaign contribution.”
Does OFA mean for the President to emphasize the naked divisiveness in this sequence? Does Candidate Obama believe he will win re-election by castigating the well-to-do, because, since there are not that many of the well-to-do, their votes don’t count? Candidate Obama won a solid victory in 2008 just because he didn’t appeal to divisions. Now he is a dull agitator.
