THERE'S AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Barack Obama has spent the summer trying to assassinate Mitt Romney’s character.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama turned to this tactic to distract voters from a struggling economy, the rising cost of living and the government’s exploding debt.

Certainly this is part of the explanation, but it is only half the story.  The other half has more to do with distracting voters from questioning the president’s political agenda.

Not surprisingly liberals in the mainstream media want nothing to do with that story, as most of them continue to carry water for the administration. Fortunately for President Obama, even Republicans have been reluctant to go there, for fear of sounding too harsh in their criticisms – that is up until now.   But Mitt Romney’s recent comment that Obama has foreign ideas may have changed all that, and that’s something Barack Obama doesn’t want to see happen.  That’s because he knows that the foreign ideas that Romney referenced have a lot to do with the real question facing voters in 2012 -  whether or not Americans want to embrace socialism.

Of course liberals who are reading this article are probably ready to explode.  Like the president, they’ll feign indignation and scream that calling Obama a socialist amounts to a scare tactic and a personal attack.  But that’s nonsense.  In Europe and much of the world socialism is an accepted political system.  Some of America’s oldest allies are socialist countries, England and France included.  Questioning Barack Obama’s political beliefs is not a personal attack.  It is not an attempt to vilify him.  It is, however, the subject of a legitimate discussion which voters have a right to hold publicly. 

Which leads us to answering the sixteen trillion dollar question. 

Only Barack Obama can say for certain whether he is a socialist, but any honest observer can conclude that the president’s policies are.     

Redistributing other people’s money, a government takeover of healthcare, bureaucrats picking the winners & losers in the business community – these are all basic tenets of socialism.  Combine these core elements of the Obama agenda with massive expansions of welfare entitlements, deep reductions in military strength and a foreign policy based on subordination to the dictates of the United Nations and you have a socialist state.   A look at the president’s outspoken supporters, groups like ACORN, the S.E.I.U., La Raza and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) completes the picture.  

As the American people come to understand this, Barack Obama’s chances at reelection diminish.  That’s because a vast majority of Americans reject socialism outright.  They know that it is based on the false premise that you can get something for nothing. They see how socialism has destroyed living standards in countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.  They see the impending economic collapse it has spawned in Europe, and they are not willing to follow the president over that same cliff.  None of this bodes well for Barack Obama, but it is good news for Americans who refuse to trade their freedom for an unemployment check.   And it’s good news for Mitt Romney.