Doubling Down on Deceit

I just saw an internet ad from Obama for America, the official Obama re-election campaign and I am astounded. The ad has the headline "Spending growth has been lower under Obama", and the text is a chart which claims to show the rate of growth of federal spending under each president since Eisenhower. In other words, the Obama campaign is not only buying into the lie about the spending increases attributable to Obamad, they are now using that lie to promote the Obama candidacy. Let's recall that the basic lie in these numbers is that they attribute all 2009 spending to George Bush. That's right, these numbers take Obama's 800 billion dollar stimulus which he proposed and got passed and say that is spending by Bush. The numbers also take the $400 billion increase in regular federal spending pushed through by Obama in 2009 and charge that to Bush as well. Oh, and for the $350 billion of TARP money that Bush had said did not need to be spent, Obama did spend it but the campaign attributes these funds too to Bush. In other words, in the basic lie $1.5 trillion of Obama spending is attributed to Bush; no wonder then that Bush is the big spender and Obama is frugal.

But let's get back to the ad. It still amazes me. When the story of Obama's spending levels first came out, even the liberal media pointed out that it was false. After all, you do not need to be a genius to understand that money proposed by and spent by Obama is not attributable to Bush. Then Obama actually made the claim in a speech and there was some media commentary about this again. I thought that Obama and his campaign would back off for sure. No president wants to be seen as a liar (and a poor liar at that.) But now here comes the campaign pushing the same lie once again.

In 2008, the Obama campaign could do no wrong. Now, they seem incapable of doing anything right. Just yesterday, a senior White House official was quoted as telling the New York Post that Mayor Corey Booker of Newark was "dead" to them. Booker, of course, famously said that the campaign's attacks on Romney's private equity career were nauseating. He walked the remarks back, but he is now officially an "enemy" of the Obama folks. In other words, the Obama folks are nuts. No competent government or campaign would ever label a major supporter who the campaign uses as a surrogate for the president as "dead to us". Booker has friends and his own campaign apparatus in New Jersey that Obama wants to work for him in November.

I have to assume that the Obama campaign will recover its footing and return to some sort of competent behavior, but I really wonder about it. This may be a total melt down. Maybe after hearing for nearly a year how Obama could not lose, the reality that Obama is on the ropes is so shocking to the Obamacrats that they are losing it altogether.