Even Politico, hardly a bastion of conservatism, has noticed it:
But Obama’s reelection strategy is about more than the haves and have-nots. It appears he is seeking to stir up full-blown cultural warfare against a large and diverse segment of society known as Republicans.
Having failed to lower the unemployment rate to a politically tolerable level, Obama cannot run as most presidential candidates do — on the economy. So he and his advisers seem to have decided instead to mount a deeply polarizing campaign based on “values” — suggesting his vision for America is correct even if the economy is not right yet.
But in waging this battle, Obama is saying nasty and dangerous things. He is promoting his own principles — not just by touting their goodness, but by suggesting that Republicans hold to an offensive, even un-American, philosophy.
By painting his opposition as not just wrong but evil, Obama risks dividing the nation in a profound and unnecessary way….
Allegations that Republicans want sick people to die and hate homosexuals are caricatures you might expect of an extreme House member or a raving partisan running for local office. That a president would say — or even believe — such things is deeply disturbing.
Nobody loves the rough and tumble of American politics more than I do—some of my happiest memories are of covering campaigns in New Orleans, a town justly famed for colorful politics. But I’ve never seen anything as nasty as the phenomenon on which Politico comments today. We don’t need this.
When you have the president of the United States, a man who came into office amid so much hope and goodwill, leading in this way, the effect on the country is bound to be negative.
Occupy Wall Street is most likely the result of the president’s class warfare rhetoric. Their cry seems to be that millionaires and billionaires should give them their money. I don’t know if it’s a one-time thing, but they don’t seem to care if millionaires and billionaires hang around to create more money or just go away. (This isn’t too different from the president’s rhetoric.)
Ad exec Donny Deutsch asserted on “Morning Joe” that what Occupy Wall Street “needs” the kind of violent imagery associated with Kent State, which provided a tragic emblem for the 1960s and '70s: a distraught woman kneeling by the body of a dead student. The Huffington Post captured what he said:
"Now, I'm not saying someone has to get killed," he quickly said. But he predicted that there would be "a climax moment of class warfare somehow played out on screen" and "unfortunately some imagery" was necessary for the movement to get its message across to the American people.
"I'm not saying a death," he said. "I'm just saying we are a visual society." Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made concerned noises off-screen.
Deutsch can’t even take responsibility for his odious remarks: “I’m not saying somebody has to get killed,” he says, when, in fact, that is pretty much what he is saying.
I know you don’t want anybody to get hurt, Mr. President, but you are dividing us.
Please, Mr. President, stop this nasty rhetoric.
Getting a second term isn't worth this kind of destruction. And, if Politico is any indication, people are onto you, and that is not going to help your cause. But it is going to harm the country. Resist this temptation.