Why Obama Must Go For Jugular Tomorrow

If Obama tells the truth against Romney’s lies in the most forceful manner, Americans will see through the mask that Romney has worn to try to sneak into the White House and stop him cold.

[Op-Ed]

On Tuesday, October 16, already jittery Obama supporters will be tethered to their television watching with anxiousness every move that Obama makes to counter whatever falsehood that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, will be spewing during the 90-minutes debate. 

It would be the same anxiousness they showed before the vice-presidential debate on Thursday, October 11, when Vice President Joe Biden faced off against his Republican rival Congressman Paul Ryan.  After the debate, it was the Democrats who were celebrating while reversely conservative commentators were accusing Mr. Biden of being rude, disrespectful, laughing. 

It is at moments like this that you know that your candidate won.

On that question of laughter, according to Mike Taibbi, Contributing Editor of Rolling Stone, “But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called ‘objective’ news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, ‘Come back when you’re serious.”’

Taibbi went on to accuse the press of not calling out Romney and Ryan of telling lies and not being specific on their proposals.  “Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can’t report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.”

This time around, Democrats are hoping that Obama would do to Romney what Biden did to Paul Ryan. He understands that his presidency is on the line. He understands that he afforded an opportunity to a snake oil salesman like Mitt Romney, during the last debate to deliver a bushel of manure to the American people, and Americans who seem to be more interested in the fluff that Romney is all about went for it instead of the substance. 

This time, Obama must go for the jugular and asphyxiate the lies Romney has been perpetrating on the American people. In the wrestling world, it is called no-holds-barred and he has to employ any means necessary to put away the impostor.

There are three jugular veins of lies that Romney posses that Obama must not allow to go unchallenged. Last time, Obama said he was being too polite; being polite is not going to save him his presidency. He behaved like back in the day when a Black man was “supposed” look down on the floor when a White man was talking to him — why he continued to look down is beyond imagination.  Last time, the right-wing nuts were happy to see Romney manhandle Obama with disrespect and disdain. 

It was George W. Bush who shouted to Senator John Kerry during their second presidential debate in 2004, “Fool me once.”  Obama’s mission must be to so decimate Romney that the conservative media would be so angry that they call him all kinds of names.

The first question has to address is on economic patriotism. It shouldn’t be on the kind of economic patriotism that Obama has been talking about.  Economic patriotism should be about believing in American economic exceptionalism, and on this core, Romney has bet many times against the economic interests of America. 

Obama must bring up the question of Romney’s off-shore investments. How could an individual who is running for the position of the president of the United States of America be betting against the economic interests of the country, by putting his money in Swiss banks accounts as well as in the Bahamas and Cayman island.  There is no honor in not talking about it.  Voters must be reminded that this man who so much loves the country, prefers to put his money away so that he could avoid paying taxes.  Obama must hit him hard on this issue.

Medicare is another issue that Democrats shouldn’t be having problem winning.  What is the problem of reminding voters that Republicans had opposed the creation of the program and have always voted against it. The idol of the right-wing nuts, Ronald Reagan campaigned against the program, and warned that “Medicare would lead federal officials to dictate where physicians could practice medicine, and open the door to government control over where Americans were allowed to live. In fact, Reagan warned that if Medicare became law, there was a real possibility that the federal government would control where Americans go and what they do for a living.”  It is sad that seniors, just like the poor whites, are voting against their own interests, seniors not realizing how the Republicans have always opposed medicare, and poor whites not realizing that the Republican Party is for the rich.

The third issue is women.  Every question Obama answers must pivot back to the issue of women.  They his most loyal supporters, unfortunately except for married women.  Obama must remind women the first law he signed into law was the equal pay for women, which Republicans fought against, and which Romney has not indicated that he would have signed.  Obama must remind voters that he has appointed two women Justices to the Supreme Court.

Despite the hallowed and bogus utterances of his opponent, Obama has a great record to run on.  He should be very proud of having rescued this country from the abyss of catastrophic economic depression, which is what it would have been had George Bush continued in office. 

He rescued Wall Street, though those dogs that he fed have come back to bite his hand of friendship as they continue to amass more and more wealth under Obama’s administration as the stock market has soared more than 100% since he took office.

If Obama tells the truth against Romney’s lies in the most forceful manner, Americans will see through the mask that Romney has worn to try to sneak into the White House and stop him cold.


Onyeani publishes The African Sun Times


“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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