PJ Media
August 7, 2012
The “dirty season” that Myra Adams wrote about a few days back is in full swing. In a new Priorities USA super PAC ad, Team Obama accuses Mitt Romney of killing this poor man’s wife with cancer.
The YouTube write-up on this scurrilous ad: “If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses.” The ad will get part of Priorities USA’s $30 million behind it in six battleground states, to make Mitt Romney into a cold-blooded killer.
We could do some unpacking and note that a cancer that kills its victim in 22 days is not a cancer that’s likely to respond even to the best treatments money can buy. We could also note that under Obama’s plan, energy rates skyrocketed and insurance rates have gone up, both of which have gobbled up middle class savings. We could note that under Obama’s plan, the federal government will end up rationing care and might have ruled the man’s wife unworthy of saving. We could note that under Obama’s plan, many companies are contemplating dropping coverage for their workers because they don’t want the liabilities. We could also note that under Obama’s plan, welfare reform has been gutted, illegal aliens have been granted an amnesty-lite by fiat, and the freedom of conscience has been unilaterally repealed. Obama did all of that.
But I’m thinking that something bigger is needed. Barack Obama promoted the lending policies that led directly to the housing bubble and the inevitable pop. That crash has done more harm to the middle class and everyone else than anything Bain could possibly do. Obama needs to be tied directly to that, and it needs to be shown that his call for “fairness” is really a call to do even more economic damage to the country. Unlike the charge made in the ad above, accusing Obama of helping wreck the economy would have the benefit of being true.
Update: Mitt Romney must be a time-traveler, because Mr. Soptic’s wife passed away more than seven years after Romney left Bain. By that time, Romney had already saved the Salt Lake City Olympics and was well into his run as governor of Massachusetts.
Soptic worked at GST Steel. That’s the steel company that the Obama camp has already accused Romney of shutting down, despite the fact that he had been away from Bain for several years by the time of the company’s failure. But the point of the ad above and the entire “Romney Hood” and GST lines of attacks is not to be factual or fair. The point is to be poisonous, to build a caricature of Mitt Romney as some sort of heartless robber baron.
Sen. Obama once promised to fire staff who engaged in this sort of attack politics. He went on to play the race card against the Clintons. Now, he is openly embracing and launching the most disgusting attacks since the NAACP accused George W. Bush of murdering James Byrd.
