By David Limbaugh
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
President Obama's casting of Mitt Romney as extreme is
one of the most glaring incidents of political projection in the modern era.
Romney doesn't approach extremism in substance, style or disposition. Obama
swims in it.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Obama said
Romney has locked himself into "extreme positions" on economic and
social issues and would implement them if in office.
Accusing Romney of extremism is just another arrow in
Obama's fantasy quiver, because reality just doesn't help him. Romney is
anything but extreme, and no serious political analyst believes otherwise. He
is certainly extremely bullish on America, American business and the free
enterprise system, and he doubtlessly wants to move the nation extremely away
from the disastrous course on which Obama is taking it, but that's about the
extent of his extremism. Romney's policies are right of center, to be sure, but
not extreme, except from the perspective of a radical leftist, which brings us
to Obama.
Let's use Obama's bill of particulars against Romney as a
yardstick to measure his own place on the political spectrum -- as if it
weren't painfully obvious.
Obama says Romney is locked into extreme positions on
economic issues because Romney favors across-the-board tax cuts that
"would mostly help the rich."
Obama discredits himself in the very words of his charge.
If the cuts are across-the-board, they don't mostly favor the rich. In fact,
Romney -- to my disappointment, by the way -- is suggesting reducing deductions
for upper-income earners. Obama, on the other hand, apparently believes that
the bottom 49.5 percent of income earners are getting ripped off because they
are paying zero income taxes. He must think his actions in expanding the public
sector, increasing the food stamp rolls and removing the work requirement for
welfare are moderate.
Obama says Romney is extreme for not signing on to his
quixotic wind energy hallucinations -- as if anyone who doesn't believe in the
government's throwing away billions more at failed and scandalous green energy
experiments is the extremist -- as opposed to recklessly implementing such
policies when the nation has one foot in the bankruptcy door.
Obama says Romney lacks "serious ideas" and
refuses to "own up" to the responsibilities of what it takes to be
president. These take the cake.
Romney is proposing serious entitlement, tax and spending
reform and reducing the unprecedented regulatory burden strangling the private
sector. Nothing remotely extreme here. Sorry, Mr. Obama; that rabid dog will
not hunt.
Obama has amassed deficits in excess of $1 trillion in
each of his four years. He has not produced a budget that would yield deficits
below that threshold in the next decade. He has not even presented a plan to
reform entitlements, has obstructed Republican reform bills and has saddled us
with a brand-new budget-busting entitlement (Obamacare). His own budgets failed
to get a single vote -- not even a Democratic vote. Extremism?
How about Obama's serious ideas? The only idea Obama has
come up with since 2008 has been government spending. There is no evidence he
can even ponder economic solutions straying from that nightmare. He certainly
will not reduce the tax and regulatory burden on producers and small
businesses, and he most definitely will not take his pillow off the face of the
smothered private sector. He can't, because he is a dogmatic extremist who
would rather preside over national financial catastrophe than deviate from his
straightjacketing ideology.
How about owning up to the responsibilities of being
president? Do these include intentionally dividing Americans, sidestepping a
bipartisan budget commission he formed for political cover, orchestrating
America's military decline, sabotaging domestic energy producers, grotesquely
gloating over the killing of Osama bin Laden, and endless golf outings?
Social issue extremism? Romney can hardly be called an
extremist on abortion. He not only rejects Todd Akin's formulation; he supports
the rape exception. Obama, on the other hand, opposed Illinois' Born Alive
Infant Protection Act and supports partial-birth abortion.
Perhaps most laughable is Obama's assertion that unlike
Romney, he will be willing to compromise on a range of issues. If his entire
first term doesn't prove that claim is sheer carnival barkery, then nothing
can. Romney, on the other hand, has sometimes been criticized from the right
for compromising too much with Democrats.
Obama's left wing has become so extreme that it would
have the nation believe that mainstream conservative ideas are now extreme and
that the extreme positions it promotes are moderate, reasonable and routine.
Only if George Orwell defines the terms -- and for Obama
and today's left, he increasingly does -- is Romney extreme and Obama a
centrist. I suspect that in November, Obama is going to find out just how far
out of phase he is with the electorate, but we shall see.
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