The 7 Most Trivial Campaign Issues That Obama Has Embraced

October 19, 2012

John Hawkins
Townhall.com

"You’ve seen, as middle-income people in this country, incomes go down $4,300 a family, even as gasoline prices have gone up $2,000. Health insurance premiums, up $2,500. Food prices up. Utility prices up. The middle-income families in America have been crushed over the last four years." -- Mitt Romney


"We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through. We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don’t have to settle for 50 percent of kids coming out of college not able to get work. We don’t have to settle for 23 million people struggling to find a good job. If I become president, I’ll get America working again. I will get us on track to a balanced budget. The president hasn’t. I will. I’ll make sure we can reform Medicare and Social Security to preserve them for coming generations. The president said he would. He didn’t." -- Mitt Romney


Like him or not, you have to admit that Mitt Romney has at least centered his campaign around the issues that matter. He has spent most of his time focused on the economy, jobs, the debt, and foreign policy. On the other hand, Barack Obama's entire campaign has been one long circus of trivialities. Instead of making "Forward" his campaign slogan, he should have used something more appropriate like, "Hey, look over there!" How bad has it gotten? This bad.

1) Binders Full of Women: During the second debate, while Mitt Romney was explaining how he managed to put "more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America" as governor of Massachusetts, he mentioned that women's groups brought him "whole binders full of women." That insignificant comment, which doesn't even qualify as a gaffe, produced lots of dull "try hard" liberal humor on the Internet, but Barack Obama has become so desperate that he's actually bringing it up on campaign stops, "I’ve got to tell you, we don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women, ready to learn and teach in these fields right now" -- says the man who hired Hillary Clinton because she was married to the right guy and then tossed her under the bus to cover his behind on Libya.

2) Lady Parts: Barack Obama's official campaign website ran a "someecard" that said "Vote like your lady parts depend on it."

Wow, how presidential.

Oh, and does Ann Romney know that Mitt is anti-lady parts or more shockingly, does SHE JUST NOT CARE? Oops, better be careful or that line might turn up in an Obama campaign commercial.

3) Sandra Fluke: As part of their "war on women" meme, the Democrats trotted out 30 year old student, Sandra Fluke, who demanded that the government force the Pope to spend thousands of dollars a year to supplement her birth control. This was not the smartest issue to land on with both feet in the first place since it ended up alienating the Catholic vote, but it was truly bizarre to see the Democrats embrace Sandra Fluke so fully that they gave her a high profile speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. A 30 year old ne'er do well who's demanding that the government give her free stuff she should be paying for herself is an all too apt symbol of what Barack Obama has spent his last four years doing.

4) Big Bird: Liberals and conservatives have long disagreed on the wisdom of borrowing billions from China in order to give corporate welfare to PBS, but the Obama campaign has turned the issue into a central plank of its campaign. Yes, we get it. As long as Barack Obama is President, the 8-10 billion dollars that PBS is slated to get from the government over the next decade is safer than the nuclear football. This turned out to be such an embarrassingly insignificant meme to latch onto that even Jon Stewart mocked Obama for it, which is sort of like being called sleazy by Larry Flynt.

5) Seamus the Dog: The Obama campaign spent a surprising amount of time trying to stir up outrage about Mitt Romney putting his dog Seamus in a pet carrier attached to the roof of his car. Romney was taking his family on vacation and wanted to take the dog along, but there wasn't room inside the car. So, like millions of other Americans have done in the same situation, he put the dog carrier on the roof. This continued until conservatives noted that Barack Obama actually ATE A DOG once and for all we know, might still enjoy a bit of Pickled Pugs Feet topped with Greyhound Poupon from time to time. Suddenly, the Obama campaign wasn't so interested in talking about dogs anymore.

6) Ann Romney's Horse: Of course, Seamus wasn't the only Romney pet that the Obama campaign tried to turn into an issue. Believe it or not, the Democratic National Committee actually ran ads attacking Ann Romney for having a horse, which she used as part of her therapy for multiple sclerosis. Can you imagine the ads they'd probably be running if the Romneys had any gerbils?

7) Romney’s Offshore Investments and Money in the Cayman Islands: Despite the fact that Barack Obama wants to forgive a billion dollars of Egyptian debt and used stimulus money to create jobs in more than a dozen foreign countries, his campaign spent an inordinate amount of time criticizing Mitt Romney because he has money invested overseas. As Mitt Romney noted in the second debate, this whole flimsy line of attack might be just a wee bit hypocritical.

Mr. President, have you looked at your pension? …Let me give you some advice. Look at your pension. You also have investments in Chinese companies. You also have investments outside the United States. You also have investments through a Cayman’s trust.


If Barack Obama doesn't even know what investments he has in his own pension, is it any surprise that he doesn't realize how much debt we have, how damaging Obamacare is to America, or how many Americans he's keeping out of work with his policies?