Better Late Than Never

I think the media in this country are finally catching on to the GOP tactic of putting words into Obama's mouth that he did not say (or accusing him of a policy that he did not implement) and then attacking him on it.  We've seen Republicans do that with the You Didn't Built That meme and follow it up with the whole false notion that Obama is cutting Medicare benefits by $716 billion (Obama increased Medicare benefits). Then, in a Newsweek hit piece, right-winger Niall Ferguson actually wrote that the President broke his pledge that ObamaCare wouldn't increase the federal deficit (the CBO has determined that the Affordable Care Act does in fact reduce the deficit).

More recently, we've seen Republicans stating that Obama eliminated the "back to work" requirements for welfare when he actually strengthened said requirements.  But the media's response to this GOP strategy is begining to evolve.  Wolf Blitzer, a few days ago, challenged Romney surrogate John Sununu on this particular piece of GOP welfare bullshittery in what I thought was a very impressive interview on Wolf's part.  When CNN host Soledad O'Brien challenged Sununu a few days prior on the exact same GOP horseshit, all Sununu could say in response was: “Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this.”

And on NPR last Friday, Scott Inskeep inverviewed radical right winger Connie Mackey, a Todd Akin defender. When Inskeep asked Mackey whether Akin should have known that his remarks on "legitimate rape" were incorrect when he uttered them, Mackey didn't answer the question but instead tried to launch another false attack and asked why the media hasn't questioned Obama's statement that men should never legislate health issues related to women. Obama, of course, did not say that; and to NPR's credit, the Obama comment was immediately replayed, and the President actually stated that politicians, some of them men, shouldn't interfere in women's health care.

There is a reason why the GOP is openly lying about Obama (and oftentimes actually stating that the President did something when he did the exact opposite).  Like him or not, everybody in this country pretty much knows Obama and what he stands for, and this is a problem for Republicans, particularly given that few people out there actually like Romney while Obama is generally liked as a person.  Earlier in the year, folks like Sarah Palin -- in an attempt to resolve this problem -- suggested that stale issues like Reverend Wright and Bill Akers should be re-asserted because Obama wasn't "properly vetted" four years ago, but that notion gathered little if any steam.

As pointed out here, the Republicans need something new to say about Obama because all the old stuff just isn't working. So the GOP strategy now is to simply make up stuff about Obama and hope that some of it sticks.

We have, of course, seen it all before.  But this time there is a difference.  The mainstream media types just aren't buying into it like they did in the past and are pushing back. I suspect the GOP are just as surprised by this development as they are about the fact that the Democrats themselves are fighting back instead of just taking the punches.