The Simple Reason Why the GOP's Medicare Attacks on Obama Won't Work

Steve Benen nails it:

What is Medicare? It's a massive, government-run system of socialized medicine. It's wildly popular, very successful, and one of the pillars of modern Democratic governance.***

[T]he left loves Medicare and always has; the right hates Medicare and always has. For liberals, the system is a celebrated ideal; for conservatives it's an unconstitutional, big-government outrage in desperate need of privatization.

In 2012, once we get past all of the talking points and attack ads, we're left with this: Romney/Ryan wants you to believe they're the liberals. No, seriously. Think about what the Republican presidential ticket, Fox News, Krauthammer, Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee have been saying all week: those mean, rascally Democrats cut our beloved Medicare and voters should be outraged.

In other words, the argument pushed by the most right-wing major-party ticket in a generation is that Barack Obama is a left-wing socialist who wants government-run socialized medicine and that Barack Obama is a far-right brute who wants to undermine government-run socialized medicine.

This would sort-of be akin to Obama accusing the Republicans of wanting to expand the availability of abortions by getting the federal government to pay for them. Nobody in this country would believe such an accusation because Republicans have historically opposed abortion.  Well, most have anyway.

And speaking of off-the-mark GOP attacks, a group of former U.S. military and intelligence officers appear in a documentary released on Wednesday asserting that the Obama administration has taken too much credit for killing Osama bin Laden.  I find this line of attack hilarious for several reasons:

• I simply haven't heard much if anything from the Obama campaign lately on this whole bin Laden killing deal.  I've been critical of Obama for not claiming enough credit for taking out that sonofabitch and have been surprised by his campaign's lack of interest in touting this huge success.  Maybe this lack of interest on Obama's part explains why these wannabe Swift Boaters waited until mid-August to begin their assault.  Perhaps they were waiting for the President to raise the issue himself; and when that didn't happen, they decided to launch the attack anyway.

• Everybody knows that if the raid to take out bin Laden had failed, these same assholes would be attacking Obama for being weak when it comes to defending this great country from The Terrorizers.  Geesus, prior to bid Laden's death, Dick Cheney routinely criticized Obama on national security issues, even to the point of accusing the President of "pretending" we're not at war. And Newt Gingrich actually stated back in 2009: "In the Obama administration, protecting the rights of terrorists has been more important than protecting the lives of Americans."  Does anyone think all these attacks would have stopped had the bin Laden raid failed?

• Running ads attacking Obama for taking too much credit for killing bin Laden has the interesting effect of repeatedly reminding voters of something that the President's campaign seems reticent to talk about, namely, that Obama killed bin Laden. Thanks for all the free advertising, folks.

The bottom line:  These Neo-SwiftBoaters -- and most of the rest of the GOP -- are mad as hell that Obama was able to pull off his politically-risky raid to get bin Laden.  I have no doubt that these guys would rather see bin Laden still at large so they could attack the President for not being able to get him.