Hyperbole, Lunacy and Marco Rubio

I like to think this is just the primary season rearing its head and that the divisiveness of elections is simply an element of democracy that unavoidably comes and goes, but the extraordinary hyperbole being employed by conservatives to describe one of the most lackluster presidential administrations of the last 50 years is starting to get under my skin.

Today seems a good day to discuss it, based on remarks made by Marco Rubio, the distinguished senator from Florida, at the CPAC spectacle. Via The Christian Science Monitor:

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“Unlike any leader in modern American history, we are led today by a president that has decided to pit Americans against each other,” Rubio thundered. “The basic argument he is making to our nation is that the reason why some of us are worse off than we used to be is because other people are doing too well. That the only way for some of us to do better is for some people to do worse.”
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Having heard Rubio's voice before, I can't help but wonder how exactly it "thundered," but that's beside the point. What really gets me more and more each day is the mischaracterization of Barack Obama as some type of radical president. If I may speak for everyone in America whose philosophy tilts even slightly to the left, I would say to that "Ha!"

Since Rubio has been as plagued by the real nutty band of his party as much as Obama, let's just assume he is making reference to those polite disagreements in policy which Newt Gingrich likes to call socialist.

One is that Barack Obama wants the rich to pay their fair share in taxes. This is horrifying to the very rich, who have suggested it would prevent them from creating jobs. Never mind that the Great Recession began during a period of unprecedented tax relief for the top 1 percent, this beef with Obama ignores a significant face. While Obama ran upon and has stumped for a more fair tax program, he hasn't done jack about it. Not when Democrats controlled the House, not when a filibuster-proof majority was in the Senate, never!

As someone who is utterly confused how such a simple move as returning tax rates to mid-1990s levels would set this country somewhere it can't come back from (unless we ever, you know, elect a Republican president for even a year), I find it somewhat laughable that Rubio and his GOP consorts even find this abominable aspect of Obama's as anything beyond an empty threat. To recap, everything the Republicans fear about Obama's fiscal policies is utter exaggeration, and it's all crap anyways beyond Obama has never followed through even a little bit.

The same can be said for most any part of that crazy leftist agenda which Obama supposedly crams down our throats against our will. ObamaCare? A watered-down series of reforms which doesn't even contain a public option. An appeasement foreign policy? Right, except that it has been nothing but a continuation of Bush's foreign policy, the exact policies which made us the bane of the entire rest of the world.

So why is it that the Republicans fight so hard against this paper dragon of a president? I would like to offer my own theory.

It's because they are losing.

I know that comment can come bite me in the ass, and even working on the presumption this election is Obama's to lose, it is entirely possible he will. But the truth is that those Republicans who have found electoral success can see clearly that the party is not on that path for 2012.

Rubio's remarks today were eaten up by CPAC goers like a Roman emperor's commands to his bloodthirsty forces. This type of speech is called "red meat" for a reason. But what is being sold to primary voters right now is a false reality, and one which independent voters won't buy so easily.

This president is not a communist. He isn't anti-Christian. He isn't anti-business. He isn't anti-freedom. How do we know this? Because nothing has come of any of having a man with such an agenda in the White House for four years. The folks on the right are selling a lie. The country is not falling apart, and the fact a Super Bowl ad saying nothing more than that America can weather a recession shows how nefarious the motives of the Republicans are.

But America is strong, and it is strong enough to stand up to these lies and smart enough to see through this crap.