Romney Blames Obama for Class Warfare? How Predictable

The South Carolina primary verdict is still days away, but Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney already is acting like his party's nominee, leveling a fusillade of criticisms at President Obama for the Great Recession, the jobless recovery, the entitlement society, job outsourcing, European socialism, Sharia sympathies, saving the auto industry (you knew that was big bad government, didn't you?), the deficit, and capitalism-strangling government regulations, among his many wild charges since coming into Iowa as the presumed frontrunner. At any moment, I expect him to declare Mr. Obama to blame for the tainted orange juice scare.

Never mind that virtually everything that has ever come out of the mouth of Mitt Romney has later been recanted by the man himself. He wants to make one point perfectly clear: Mr. Obama is declaring class warfare among American voters in order to divide society into the haves and have-nots for political advantage.

It is, without a doubt, the most pernicious attack and vicious accusation ever made by Mr. One Percent. But it is in keeping with longtime Republican scorched earth campaign strategy: Keep leveling charges and spreading lies and innuendos both big and small on Democrats until they are, quite literally, buried in turd.

Almost without exception, Romney's baseless charges against the Obama administration are profoundly more credible if it were Obama leveling them against Romney. But you know that will never happen, because Democrats, ironically, have too much class to engage in such raw voter deceptions.

It remains to be seen whether American voters will again fall for this deceptive, scurrulous, unrepentent and shameless scheming.

But one thing is for certain — to a greater extent than ever, they believe that class warfare has become a factor in politics this year. Here is a commentary based on a public opinion poll by Pew Research Center identifying class warfare as one of the top issues facing voters, from Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein. Also, here is the Washington Post's reporting yesterday on that poll by Annie Gowen.

One thing we know for sure: Republicans will use any issue and any attacks, the facts be damned, to deflect blame for our economy onto the Obama administration, despite facts that, taken objectively, should lead voters to place the blame squarely on the Bush-Cheney eight years that directly led to the Great Recession. It's unbelievable, but true.