Is Obama a foreign-born, radical, secular, anti-gun, Islamic socialist who is weak on terrorism, best friends with Saul Alinsky and fighting a war on Christmas, all while secretly harboring a hate for white people?
No.
But listening to the Republican Party and its surrogates spew these accusations at him over the past three years causes one to wonder. Planting this seed of skepticism is exactly their intention — throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.
For most people, especially Republicans, chances are one of these accusations struck a chord. Chances are the types of people listening to this probably own guns, celebrate Christmas and are white. Chances are they are also Christian and born in the good ol’ U.S of A.
The accusations are directed at them for a reason — to distract them from reality. They are meant to create, for the Republicans, a bubble in which an imaginary elitist president named Barack Hussein Obama lives. Inside he creates no jobs, passes no bills and kills no terrorists.
The truth is, Obama has passed a stimulus package that put a floor on the recession, not to mention created more net jobs than Bush, according to The New York Times. The president has professed his Christianity countless times, presented the world with both his long and short form birth certificate, and not once laid a hand on anyone’s guns or Christmas trees. Last but not least, he went against his advisers in instructing Seal Team 6, which left Osama bin Laden at the bottom of the Arabian Sea.
This explains why conservatives feel they have to create this bubble. Without it they cannot win.
The Republican Party has, not so quietly, self-proclaimed itself as the party that is strong on terrorism, supports the military, and overall gets things done with artillery. Yet President George Bush took bin Laden off his list of priorities and left two wars unfinished. Now that Obama has succeeded where Bush failed for eight years, what do they base their campaign on?
Tax cuts. If Republicans can’t campaign on the military, they can always campaign on tax cuts. That’s why, according to the Los Angeles Times, Mitt Romney said Obama has raised taxes 19 times. These chargers come even after the 2008 stimulus bill in which Obama said in his 2011 Labor Day Speech, “We said working folks deserved a break, so within one month of me taking office, we signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history, putting more money into your pockets.” The GOP can’t compete against a man who uses its only two talking points to their fullest extent.
Mitt Romney isn’t limited to just one lie though. He was quoted at that Wall Street Journal/Fox News debate as saying, “We have a president in office for three years, and he does not have a jobs plan yet.” The American Jobs Act, created by Obama, which can be downloaded in full from AmericanJobsAct.com is open to the public, and by extension Mitt Romney. But in the imaginary bubble it sure would be nice if he didn’t have a jobs plan, wouldn’t it, Mitt.
From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accusing Obama of creating death panels for the elderly to the NRA outlining his fake plan to get rid of guns, both of which proved false by FactCheck.org, the right has consistently tried to place him in their false bubble.
The Republican surrogates and conservative base can’t be completely blamed for ignoring facts in order to push an alternative agenda. Their leaders, on the other hand, can be blamed.
Facts don’t matter much when, according to CNN, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Not jobs, not the greater welfare of society, not democracy and certainly not facts. No, the single most important thing half of elected officials were advised to do was prevent Obama from being re-elected. With that, the bubble of false pretenses was created.