Of course, these aren’t his words. They’re the words of his potential opponent in the general election, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Romney’s seeming callousness toward poor and unemployed Americans has gone viral among left-wing pundits and social media users, and this is a major problem. As much as conservatives may quibble about context and Romney’s actual intentions, we must keep in mind that Romney will be facing the same electorate that voted Obama into office in 2008–the same electorate that believed Sarah Palin, not Tina Fey, said, “I can see Russia from my house.”

The voters of 2012 will, by and large, not choose a candidate based on proposed policies and governing records; they will choose based on a simple narrative, a log line that makes the case for one’s candidacy in as few words as possible. In 2008, Obama’s was “First Black President.” McCain’s was “Veteran Endured Torture, Served His Country With Honor,” and Palin’s was “Ordinary Mother Rose to Governorship.” By the same token, candidates craft counter-narratives about their opponents. The anti-Obama narrative, “Too Radical, Too Inexperienced,” did not stick, and the anti-Palin narrative, “Stupid,” did, thanks almost wholly to the shameless left-wing advocacy of the mainstream media.

It is an unfortunate fact that having the truth on our side is not enough. Not every voter is as informed as those of us who follow politics religiously; we are the exception to the rule. Nationwide elections such as this are decided not based on truth but the perception of truth, and while I do not say this to justify deception by the Republican Party’s eventual nominee, that individual must be able to withstand the deception and false impressions presented by Obama and his media proxies.

With those facts on the table, it follows that among the four remaining GOP candidates, Mitt Romney is the weakest possible one to run against Obama. The pro-Romney narrative is “Experienced Businessman, Centrist Governor,” and if that were all there was to the election, that would make him our most electable candidate. However, the counter-narrative will destroy him. Obama can no longer run on “First Black President.” He can’t inspire based on “Hope and Change” after allowing the country to stagnate for four years. His reelection rests solely on his counter-narrative to the Republican candidate, and the primary facet of his response to Romney will be “Privileged, Rich, Out of Touch.”

Mitt Romney is the son of a governor who was a rich businessman in his own right. He went to a ritzy private school. He has an Ivy League MBA. He co-founded Bain Capital, a venture capitalist firm that some have labeled as predatory. He has stated he pays an effective income tax rate of 15 percent. He has stated he’s “not concerned about the very poor” and that he “likes the ability to fire people.” At a time when many people are struggling to pay the mortgages on their homes, Romney owns six.

Yes, these things don’t matter to us as conservatives. We don’t begrudge anyone their wealth, we believe in capitalism, and we know all the intricacies of his capital gains taxes and generous charity that mitigate the “15 percent tax rate” bit. But the average voter will not spend the time or effort figuring this out. They will hear these talking points, believe them, and regurgitate them, and it will destroy Romney’s candidacy.

Romney plays right into the left’s overarching narratives–the moral outrage at Wall Street’s opulence, the envy of millionaires “born into” their wealth, the disconnect between the GOP and the poor. He provides a villain and scapegoat for Obama’s campaign. And he does this not because these talking points can be used against him but because he can’t rebut them effectively on the national stage.

Consider how he whiffed the question about releasing his tax returns in South Carolina’s CNN debate, eliciting boos from the audience. That issue had been making its way around the press for weeks; he had time to prepare a believable excuse if not a compelling defense. When George Stephanopoulos asked him about banning contraception, the sheer silliness of the question was all that kept Romney from looking like the bigger fool in the exchange, feebly protesting for minutes as the former Clinton adviser pushed the question again and again. When Mitt squares off with lefty journalists, he doesn’t come out on top, which means they will get to define him with Obama’s counter-narrative. That was a campaign killer for Sarah Palin, and it will be for Governor Romney, too.

Romney has other electability weaknesses; until recently, he’s held off on personally going negative, relying on PACs and other proxies to attack his opponents for him. This lends credence to the left’s Citizens United boogeyman, the narrative that evil billionaire corporatists like the Koch brothers are trying to buy the election. And his Mormonism is a liability, as well–not because of anti-LDS prejudices among the electorate, but because it will give Obama the ability to play the race card effectively. “The Mormon church did not allow blacks to serve as priests until 1978; why was Romney part of the church prior to that?”, the media will ask. It’s a troubling Catch-22; he can’t denounce his own faith, and he likely can’t point to a record of pushing for that change prior to ‘78.

We need not kid ourselves; faced with what Andrew Breitbart calls the Democrat-Media complex, the Republican Party needs a candidate that will not be playing defense the whole time–a candidate who can put Obama and his proxies on the ropes, controlling the national dialogue instead of reacting to it. And Mitt Romney’s gaffes and inability to transcend the labels that will inevitably come from the left–”Privileged,” “Out of Touch,” and “Racist”–should give serious pause to those convinced of his electability.

To make an analogy from Mr. Romney’s own past, one can be a missionary in France who’s the most brilliant theologian and apologist ever, but if he can’t speak the language, he’s sunk. In the same way, one can be the most likable, moderate, competent governor in a field of candidates, but if he can’t effectively counter the narrative opposition and instead personifies their stereotypes, he and his entire party is sunk.

In a recent radio interview, Belafonte took the President to task and asked what his legacy would be in the wake of the opportunities he has been given. Mr. Belafonte’s criticism comes at a time when President Obama finds himself under increasing pressure for the far left wing of his Party, as they feel he has failed to deliver on his promises of hope and change.

For months now, President Obama has been under pressure from members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and other black activists to start addressing those problems facing the most loyal voting bloc of the Democrat Party, yet the President and his advisers have pushed back against this, claiming they are concerned about the problems facing all Americans.

Belafonte’s criticism and anger are understandable, as he and many like him thought that the Obama Presidency was going to lead to the fulfillment of all the progressive promises of the last 60 years, especially those promises made by Democrats and their sock puppet leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Belafonte and other black Democrat activists know full well that they will have a harder time turning out record numbers of black voters in any effort to reelect President Obama this time. In 2008, the narrative in the black community was that the election of Barack Obama was in part way the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, but with more than 3 years under his belt, Belafonte and others would be hard pressed to find anyone in the black community who could claim they are better off today than they were 3 years ago.

Even members of the Congressional Black Caucus are starting to feel the heat at the grassroots level as black activists, who are normal allies at election time, are threatening to challenge certain members of the caucus. Senior members of the caucus such as Maxine Waters have tried to blame the Tea Party for President Obama’s failures, but many blacks still remember that President Obama entered office with massive majorities in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate, and that narrative simply does not add up. President Obama, for his part, has felt the heat from other black elected officials and activists and lashed out against them this past summer at the Congressional Black Caucus annual gala when he stated that blacks need to “stop complainin’,” “put on your marching shoes,” and follow him into the battle for jobs and opportunity.

Conservative blacks like myself and others have endured years of name calling from progressives such as Belafonte, the Congressional Black Caucus, and other black activists who have sold their souls to the Democrat Party, but now that one of their own is calling the shots, they still are complaining about the same issues and problems and it is all too clear now what we have been saying. Progressive ideas may look good on paper, but in the real world they simply don’t work. The only redeeming thing that President Obama can count on is that the Republican establishment might seem hell-bent on making former Governor Mitt Romney their nominee in 2012 and thus, it will make President Obama’s reelection effort that much easier as Governor Romney will find himself the victim of a unabated smear campaign from which he will not be able to defend himself from because he is a Mormon and black Democrat activists will play up the fact that blacks were not allowed to join the Mormon Church until the 1980s.

The most redeeming quality about Belafonte’s comments for conservatives such as myself are that we knew all along that the Obama Presidency was going to be one mired in complete failure and chaos.

JAY CARNEY:  The Factor’s devoting a whole show to the revelations next week, sir.  Word is, he’ll read excerpts from your Harvard Law senior thesis, “Tart Reform: a New Paradigm for the Oldest Profession.”

OBAMA: Good lord!  I’ll be ridiculed for something I didn’t even write.  How do we stop this?

DAVID PLOUFFE:  Posing as a fired MSNBC whistleblower, I’ll e-mail O’Reilly and set up a meet in Fort Marcy Park tonight, sir.  You call in a favor from the Teamsters.  Tomorrow morning, joggers’ll find old “Fair and Balanced” clutching a note expressing remorse for forging documents meant to discredit you.

OBAMA:  Um, maybe something less extreme.  Leon?

PANETTA:  Our Black Projects team developed a marble-sized nuke that’ll fry transmissions in a localized area, sir.  I can task a Predator to deliver it over Fox Headquarters as O’Reilly goes on.

OBAMA:  Set it up.  But we need a cover story.  Janet, order the National Weather Service to warn of severe thunderstorms in the vicinity just before detonation.

NAPOLITANO:  Won’t fool anybody, sir.

OBAMA:  You’re right.  Instead, let’s give the Times, the Post, and our network anchors a heads-up on the EMP event.  Jay, inform them I want the spike story pulsed . . . I mean the pulse story spiked.

CARNEY:  You’re forgetting the blogosphere, sir:  Big Government and the Pajamas guys will out the truth in nanoseconds.

OBAMA:  Then I’ll shut down the internet for “national security reasons.”

NAPOLITANO:  You agreed to hold off flipping the internet kill switch until after you’re reelected, sir.

JOE BIDEN: I gotta idea, Boss: get in front of the wave.  Preempt O’Reilly, and come clean about your misspent youth with a heartfelt statement from the Oval Office.

OBAMA:  Might work.  Something along these lines:

“Let me be perfectly clear.  I toked my way through college, but the smoke has long since dissipated, and I am now clear-headed and determined to save the country from modern robber barons such as the Koch brothers in order to see to fruition my health care reforms, which are designed to prevent predatory insurers from denying home services to people like Hernando Sosa of Santa Fe, a quadriplegic who died alone last spring after swallowing his dentures, with no one to help him in his final years but an elderly aunt who had lost both feet to diabetes when Kaiser Permanente refused to. . . .”

BIDEN:  Uh, super, Chief.  Might wanna tighten it up a little, though.

PLOUFFE:  On another matter, Mr. President:  in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren just locked up the Senate nomination, but she’s already down a dozen to Scott Brown.

OBAMA:  Liz needs my help.  I’ll endorse Brown and campaign for him.  Should tank his support among independents–and raise doubts about him with Republicans.

VALERIE JARRETT:  But sir . . . won’t our people stand down because you’re pushing Brown?

PLOUFFE:  No worries, Val.  Massachusetts Democrats are genetically predisposed to vote against their interests.

OBAMA: Jay, set up a Scott Brown call center in the Situation Room.  We’ll release a tape of me working the phones.  Debbie, arrange for DNC operatives to wave “Barack and Scott for America” signs at Brown’s rallies.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Yes, sir.  Looking ahead to Election Day:  I’ll ask the New Black Panther Party to station, ah, aggressive observers outside polling places in key Republican precincts.

ERIC HOLDER:  Assure NBPP leadership that Justice Department lawyers will be on hand to shield their toughs from harassment by local authorities.

OBAMA:  Which reminds me . . . I’ve overplayed the race card.  From now on, I’ll employ the victim card.  Any suggestions?

BILL DALEY:  My voice doesn’t carry as far since my demotion, sir, so please listen carefully.  Instruct Media Matters to claim Breitbart’s spreading rumors that you have another wife and family in Cleveland; attended Madrassa with Mullah Omar; and were born a hermaphrodite.  We need people outraged and rallying around you the way they did for Cain.

OBAMA:  Clever.  Once we propagate those despicable lies, I’ll attend African Methodist Episcopal some rainy Sunday when I can’t golf and preach the virtues of forgiveness.

HOLDER:  Speaking of victims, sir—lawsuits have just been filed over the alleged shootings at Fort Hood in 2009.   One claimant is Federal Police Officer Kimberly Munley, who was allegedly wounded when she attacked Major Nidal Hasan, the alleged gunman.

OBAMA:  Damn!  Anti-Muslim sentiment will rekindle with Fort Hood back on the front pages.  I wonder . . . could we defuse tensions by inviting Hasan and Munley to the Rose Garden for a beer?

HOLDER:  Hasan would probably decline, sir.  They say he doesn’t respect women, especially women who shoot him.

Nidal Hasan

OBAMA:  What’s the status of the investigation?

HOLDER:  DOJ’s going through Officer Hunley’s background with a fine-tooth comb, sir.  I’m confident we’ll determine why she resorted to violence that day. Meanwhile, we’ve identified thirty-five eyewitnesses who are conspiring to claim Major Hasan shouted a Muslim warcry during the incident.

OBAMA:  Wherever the truth leads, Eric. . . .

[enter First Lady]

MICHELLE:  Bill Ayers is waiting outside, and he’s mad.  Says you’re behind on royalty payments you owe him for writing your autobiography.   Pay the man!  You hear me, Barack?

Yes, I know what you are going to say… “Stop giving her attention and she will go away.” The problem though, is that she has proven that she will not go away even when ignored. Why would she, she has “Olby” to give her liberal ideas (a.k.a. name calling) a platform.

With the easy pickings for cartoon ideas that appear every time she opens her mouth, she is just too hard to ignore. As a cartoonist, she (**shiver**) completes me!

I like the idea of keeping her in the spotlight so regular Americans (the Conservative majority of this country) can see what Liberals truly think of us.

Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern

Democrats have never been afraid to use the race card, but this is a new one. Senate Bill 5 and HB194 have nothing at all to do with race. But the union front group “We Are Ohio” and their Ohio Democrat lapdogs are airing a new radio ad that suggests that it is all about race.

As Democrats work to place Ohio’s Republican-backed elections law on hold through a referendum, they’re arguing that the measure is akin to poll taxes, grandfather clauses and other footnotes from America’s Jim Crow past.

But does the same argument apply to Senate Bill 5, the GOP-sponsored limits on collective bargaining for public employees that is currently subject to a referendum as state Issue 2 on the November ballot?

Democratic, labor and African-American leaders say yes.

We Are Ohio, the organized labor coalition seeking to repeal Senate Bill 5, is airing a radio ad that says “Gov. John Kasich and the Columbus politicians have passed two laws to take us back to the days of Jim Crow.”

Remember when we told you how the unions will say ANYTHING to hold onto their power? You’re witnessing that right now. Listen to some of the ridiculous justification for this outrageous ad.

Today, numerous African-American community leaders defended the ad’s content.

“Collective bargaining was the voice people used to gain a voice in government,” said Rev. Harold Hudson of Calvary Tremont Missionary Baptist Church. “In a way, Senate Bill 5 does promote segregation because it takes away those rights. Both bills are Republican-designed programs that will hurt people who are underprivileged.”

Public employees are NOT underprivileged, Reverend Hudson. They earn 43% more in total compensation than private sector workers, for one thing. They pay much less for their health care, and most have guaranteed pensions that private sector workers only dream of. So, explain to me just how public sector workers are “underprivileged.” You can’t. You just enjoy stoking the flames of racism.

Regarding HB194, you would think it was overturning women’s suffrage or something, the way the Democrats talk about it. It reduces early voting to three weeks. For that, they call the bill “voter suppression” and now refer to it as a Jim Crow law, because three weeks is just not enough time to vote or something.

This ad is repugnant, and Ohio Democrats and unions should be ashamed that they have sunk so low. If they have to resort to these disgusting, negative and false attacks, how can anyone believe what they are saying about the bills at all?

Cross-posted on the conservative Ohio political blog Third Base Politics

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All hyperbole aside, Obama’s “hope and change” has turned into hope for change, and even the Congressional Black Caucus is ready to jump ship. Yet, by their own admission, they won’t follow through and jump because Obama is black.

As CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) told the Miami Herald: “If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House.” (In other words, were such a high level of black unemployment taking place under someone as white as Clinton, protests would be in full bloom.)

But as it stands, the left’s criticism of Obama nuanced by the fact that he is black, and therefore someone against whom the race card cannot be played.

Moreover, he is someone who rode the race card into office.

Those of us who paid attention in 2008 remember Obama purposefully accepting the Democrat nomination for president on the steps of the Lincoln memorial on August 28^th – the same day in which Martin Luther King Jr. had stood on those steps in 1963 and delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. We also remember that once he was elected, mainstream media outlets of almost every shape and size gleefully reported that we’d elected our “first African-American President.”

Collectively, they waited for the clouds to part and the sun to shine forever more.

But it wasn’t to be.

And in time we realized Obama’s election had been the result of what Shelby Steele called “White Guilt” – a racial appeal to our psyches that turned an incalculable number of votes Obama’s way.

And now that the race card has been played by and for Obama to such a clear extent, it’s nearly impossible for those close to him to turn against him. Sure, they can criticize his support of higher taxes and the uber-elevated level of unemployment among blacks, but they can’t do much more than that because they sold their souls to get him in the office to begin with.

He was the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream in 2008, so it’s not really apropos to admit he’s worse than Jimmy Carter in 2011.

The lesson is simple:  live by the race card, implode by the race card.

Well Maxine your anger is quite understandable given the success of the Tea Party Movement as of late. The Tea Party was right to stand against the political establishment in the debt ceiling fight. The compromise many of us opposed led to the downgrading of America’s credit rating by S &P. We turned back a well-funded 30 million dollars effort by your union allies in the state of Wisconsin to recall 6 Republican State Senators. While the tea party has been finding success in our battles against your brand of politics, you and your fellow Democrats have been left to making excuses for the President Obama’s failures as a leader. He and his handlers have been forced to take to the airwaves and blame his policy failures on everything from the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami and bad luck, former President Bush and even technology.

The majority of the American People are clearly seeing that President Obama’s Brand of Hope and Change (Keynesian Economics) simply doesn’t work. It is real hard to sell the American people on the myth that you are working so hard on our behalf, when we continue to get photo-ops of the you on the golf course or on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

Rep. Waters, Americans are suffering and all President Obama can do is offer up another (already disproven) plan that will lead to more massive governmental spending/borrowing and calls for shared sacrifice (which reality is more of the same class warfare made famous by the believers of Keynesian Economics) just like the failed stimulus package, the same mislabeled job bills before it as well as the new focus tested statement that, “Food stamps are a direct government funded stimulus.”

Food Stamps are direct stimulus, who outside of Washington D.C. would have considered that?

Rep. Waters, you and your fellow politicians in the Washington Establishment have tried to throw every political attack that you can muster at the Tea Party Movement (from the every card in the race deck to labeling us a fringe movement), yet we remain fighting trim at every turn in our ability to take our arguments directly to the American people. It is has been said, “If politicians in Washington D.C. are complaining about you, then you must be doing something right.” While Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Progressive activists continue to try deal from the worn out deck of race cards, the Tea Party gathers even more mainstream appeal with each passing day. I also remain fully aware that you are seeking to reenergize the coalition that propelled President Obama to victory in 2008, but the same coalition of Blacks, Women, Hispanics and young people would be hard pressed to admit that they are better off today than they were 2.8 years ago. Trying to blame the Tea Party is not going to make it any better because it was not the Tea Party that made promises of Hope and Change, but President Obama. The pictures of the Congressional Black Caucus’s job fairs and town-halls in places like Atlanta and Detroit speak volumes to who have been hurt the most and show why the Tea Party has been so right about President Obama and his allies in Congress all along.

Rep. Waters, you might want the Tea Party Movement to go straight to hell or simply disappear, but the reality of the matter is that the Tea Party Movement is made up of common sense every day Americans. If this is the tactic that the Congressional Black Caucus and other Obama supporters are going to depend on in 2012, it simply is not going to fly with those who have and continue to suffer the most under his Presidency.

The members of the Tea Party Movement believe that real hope and change comes at the voting box, coupled with term limits for those like Rep. Maxine Waters have been in Washington too long with no level of real accountability. This is why she want us to go straight to hell. The jig is up and it could be another generation before you are able to sell failed Keynesian Economics to the masses.