Mitt Romney's Barack Obama

Charles Pierce dissects Romney's relationship with the "imaginary Barack Obama that he has created in his own mind." It's true that Romney's rhetoric on Obama has been toxically inaccurate, almost imagined:

Barack Obama "wants to fundamentally transform America." Barack Obama "is comfortable with trillion dollar deficits." Barack Obama "thinks the right cure for our health care is not for you to make your own decisions with your doctor but to have the federal government make those decisions for you." Barack Obama "has a very unusual idea of free enterprise and of capitalism and it starts with what they call 'crony capitalism, where he takes care of his friends, and he thinks the government should make the investment decisions because... he's... so... very... intelligent."

He continues:

Barack Obama also "has this idea that America is in decline and should appease other nations. I just saw the other day that he sent Ahmadinejad a... little... note saying let's talk this over. Well, we've had enough of the politics of 'pretty please.'" (Oh, Willard, you're so... butch.)

Barack Obama also "wants to turn this country into a European-style social-welfare state. Europe doesn't work in Europe, and it isn't going to work here." Let us be plain: Nothing Willard Romney said about the incumbent president of the United States has any more relationship to the actual truth than he does to "the streets of America" he was gabbling on about the other night. This is all meretricious nonsense, and he is a singularly appalling liar for peddling it. 

James Wolcott adds:

It isn’t just that Romney’s a liar, but that he’s such a bad liar. Gingrich is so much the better liar, packaging his lies in a blunderbuss barrage of granulated bullshit that the lie doesn’t hang out there by its lonesome self.

And how, in the four years between presidential campaigns, could Romney and his staff not have anticipated probing questions about his tax returns, performance at Bain, and offshore accounts? How come “Cayman Island accounts” didn’t throw up any caution flags in the Romney camp? Are they that pop-culturally insulated? In almost any TV series, movie, or suspense novel about international finance and money laundering, “Cayman Islands” is shorthand for hidden assets and shadowy activities, men with black gloves stifling cries as they drag a squirming John Grisham victim away from the computer console and into a waiting black van. I’m sure Romney himself has money parked their for perfectly innocent, greedy reasons, but it’s a hard thing to explain at a time when the political and opinion elite are preaching austerity to the rest of us rabble.