New Hampshire GOP Narrative: Obama's Not One of Us
"At campaign stops, Romney routinely shares his dark view of Obama and the present perilous moment. In Derry, New Hampshire, this weekend, he told a few hundred people, "What frightens me today is that we have a president I don't think who understands the nature of America—the power of opportunity and freedom. I want to bring these things back to America so we have a brighter future." And he maintained that the 2012 presidential election is "about the soul of America. Are we going to remain true to the principles that the nation was founded on? Are we going to remain a merit society?" At the first of two debates, Romney warned that Obama "wants us to turn into a European-style welfare state and have government take from some to give to others."
"Romney, a quarter-of-a-billionaire, never explained whether he opposes all redistributive programs—say, Medicare, Pell grants, and the like. But his basic case was that Obama would rather steal your wealth (his wealth?) than trust good ol' American ingenuity to create more wealth. Obama, Romney declared at that debate, "has put America on a road to decline." And, he has warned, if you folks don't stop him, you'll all end up living in—gasp!—Sweden.
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"You get the picture. Romney has voiced concern that Obama is an anti-American Robin Hood who wants to swipe the hard-earned cash of American taxpayers and hand it to others. Santorgrich believes Obama is hell-bent to crush faith and freedom in the United States. There is a slight difference. Saving the auto industry, crafting tax-cut compromises, negotiating spending cuts, lowering taxes for middle- and lower-income Americans, the Osama bin Laden raid, proposing investments in education, innovation, and research and development—none of that matters. The bottom line, in both iterations, is that the president is not a true American. For Romney, this is a matter of dollars and cents. For Gingratorum, this is a matter of profound theological and cultural significance.
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"But the overarching thrust of the GOP attack on the president in New Hampshire has not been that he's to blame for a crappy economy. It's that he is not one of us and that the election at hand is not a face-off over policy disputes but a clash over the future of the idea of America. Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are essentially calling the president a foreigner (Europe, Europe, Europe!) and campaigning to purge this country of Obama's otherness. It's an ugly narrative for ugly times."
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/new-hampshire-gop-obama-primary-attack
