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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Jonathan Bernstein: The perils of running against a fantasy Obama

Jon Bernstein makes an important point about the Republican “information bubble”

“…Want to see a great example of the closed GOP information feedback loop, and why it may prove dangerous for the Republican candidates?
Think about the two Barack Obamas that Republicans are running against. One of them is basically a fraud; he’s never held a job before he somehow wound up the Democratic nominee in 2008. Or, as Mitt Romney asserted today: “It’s hard to create a job if you never had one.”…The other Obama is the scheming, nefarious, stealth left-winger who any day now is going to unleash his radical socialist agenda.
…neither version builds a convincing case against supporting Obama in 2012. No one is going to buy that Obama is too inexperienced to be president; no one is going to buy that he has some secret agenda that remained secret during four years in the White House.
But Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field has have spent three years now speaking only to confirmed Republican voters. And those voters live in the world where reality is defined by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, in which all of that stuff makes perfect sense.
Even worse, the candidates and their operatives themselves live in that world, or at least spend an awful lot of time there. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Romney campaign believes (on some level) that Obama never held a job in his life before mysteriously winding up as president, or that he can’t get through a debate without a teleprompter.”

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