NYC Letter: Signs Of Intelligence In The GOP -- Let Mr. Obama Hang Himself*

HAPPY NEW YEAR +1

Day 1,076 of CHOPE

The 2012 presidential election --and the downstream elections -- is the GOP's to lose. And they just might (or this -- God spare us all). The economy and Obamacare make Mr. Obama un-re-electable -- if the GOP nominates a genuine conservative to oppose him -- [Hard sigh.] OK, a four-days-a-week conservative -- then hammers away at Mr. Obama's weaknesses and failures.

So we were heartened to read the GOP will be doing the latter at least.

GOP’S ELECTION BATTLE PLAN:
USE OBAMA’S OWN WORDS AGAINST HIM

January 1, 2012 (WaPo) - With Republican voters in Iowa set to finally begin picking a nominee to challenge President Obama, GOP officials in Washington are quietly and methodically finishing what operatives are calling “the book” — 500 pages of Obama quotes and video links that will form the backbone of the party’s attack strategy against the president leading up to Election Day 2012.

... Republican officials say they will leverage the party’s newly catalogued video library containing every publicly available utterance from Obama since his 2008 campaign. Television and Internet ads will juxtapose specific Obama promises of job gains, homeowner assistance, help for people in poverty, lower health insurance premiums and stricter White House ethics standards against government data and news clippings that paint a different reality.

Regular readers will recognize this as our own method, table-setting the latest Team Barry failure-excuse-blame iteration with a quote, typically by Mr. Obama himself, promising what the post details has not materialized. As Mr. Obama might say, it's not rocket science. In our case it is not.

A 2009 Obama statement that his stimulus bill would lift 2 million Americans out of poverty, for example, is paired against census data showing that more than 6 million Americans have fallen into poverty since he took office. A pledge that an administration housing plan would "help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages" is paired against news reports showing the government spent far less than promised and aided fewer than 2 million.

... One Obama quote will be featured prominently: In 2009 he said on NBC’s "Today" show that if he could not fix the economy in three years, "then there’s going to be a one-term proposition."

Delicious, that last.

A similar in-his-own-words strategy has already been adopted by Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee designed to portray GOP front-runner Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper. ... With a campaign war chest expected to total at least $750 million [Ed.: What happened to the billion dollar money juggernaut? Oh. Right.], the Obama campaign and the DNC are likely to continue hammering Romney’s shifting stances on hot-button issues to portray him as lacking a moral core.

Ha. The flop slamming the flip. Ever more delicious.

Pairing Mr. Obama's promises going in to the failures and flubs of his presidency could become just an eye-glazing endless list. It's important that the GOP stick to a few killer themes. We advise: the economy, Obamacare, and Guantánamo.

WaPo does its best to throw cold water on the GOP's winning strategy by trotting out the fairy tale of Mr. Obama's tough-to-beat personal "likability" among voters. [Pause to towel off.] We are confident Mr. Obama's "likability" will be as decisive in 2012 as it was in 2009 and 2010 (and this and here) and 2011 (and this and a capper).

And there's nothing wrong with the American people holding me accountable, holding Congress accountable. I want that accountability.

Mr. Obama,
inviting all to the gallows
60 MINUTES INTERVIEW
WASHINGTON December 9, 2011 (CBS News)

CHOPE.

Ipse dixit.

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* Note to the PC police: The title is a common gallows trope. It is not a "dog whistle" incitement to lynch a black man, Mr. Obama. You know this and we know you know this. If you are still wee-wee'd up, take an aspirin.