How the 2012 Obama campaign forced George H.W. Bush to hire Lee Atwater
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The death of one of the architects of the Republican strategy of claiming that John Kerry faked his military experience in 2004 makes this kind of whining even more hilarious:
The Clintons were accused of murdering their friends and being involved in a child sex trafficking ring. Obama was accused of being born in Kenya.
Romney was mocked for things he actually said or policies he adopted. It wasn’t particularly mean even by normal US politics. https://t.co/fjCic724zc— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) August 28, 2022
The main line of attack against Romney in 2012 was that he was a heartless plutocrat who supported the extremely unpopular economic agenda of his vice presidential nominee. It gained traction because it was obviously true. And the high point of Romney’s campaign was the first debate when he caught an admittedly complacent Obama off guard by just openly lying about the economic policies he favored. Anyway, the idea that this was some kind of unprecedentedly dirty campaign is absolutely ludicrous to anyone with the slightest knowledge of American political history, even before we get to Romney declaring that “no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate; they know that this is the place that we were born and raised” and actively seeking the endorsement of the most influential birther of them all.
As always, the real argument is that because Republicans we (barely) able to nominate Mitt Romney because Sarah Palin was too lazy to run, they deserved to win the White House by acclamation, and therefore cannot be held responsible for any of their future actions, or now that you mention it their past actions:
When were you radicalized? For me it was when Obama didn’t resign in 2012 and simply allow Mitt Romney to run uncontested for president.— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) August 29, 2022