There's something happenin' here...

By Richard K. Barry

Bring it on.

Maybe it was always going to be like this. Probably. But the 2012 presidential election is taking a decidedly ugly turn. I think Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog put it best when he wrote that "Dead Andy Breitbart is now Romney's top campaign strategist."

Somehow we're suppose to believe that poor little Mitt Romney is being blindsided by the big bad Obama campaign with their ruthless Chicago-style politics and, by golly, they just aren't going to take it anymore. So, according to BuzzFeed, the Romney campaign, much as they don't want to do it, are going to have to fight back as well as they can against such big meanies.

Or, as Romney's team prefers to have it spun:

Facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney's finances and business record, the Republican's campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisals.

As one advisor said: 

I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate. The bottom line is there'll be counterattacks. 

Counterattacks my ass. The Romney campaign was always going to do whatever they believed necessary to take down Obama and are perhaps a little surprised to find out that Obama and team already know what it means to operate in the big leagues. Sorry Mitt, this isn't going to be like you and Gingrich in Florida. This is going to be different. You wanna bitch because Obama knows how to throw a punch, go ahead.

Breitbart loved to use that word "vetting," which was just another way of reintroducing all the crap that didn't stick in 2008. Sununu's diatribe was no gaffe. He was sent out there to begin the process. "Obama doesn't know how to be an American?" He spent too much time in Indonesia, worked as a community organizer, is steeped in "Chicago-style politics?" Unbelievable.

Maybe Steve M. is right. Maybe Romney is being pushed by his base and the zillionaires paying for his campaign who can't believe the old attack lines won't work. Maybe they are demanding he go there.

But I also think that, as the campaign heats up and Obama's team fights hard and fights well, Romney will happily do what John McCain wouldn't do, which is fully embrace the kind of filth peddled by the likes of Breitbart, Limbaugh and Rove. In a nutshell that means Romney will find creative and ugly ways to argue that President Barack Obama isn't "one of us" and that the country made a grave mistake that needs to be rectified. And, as we know, there are a number of ways to suggest that Barack Hussein Obama is not really "one of us."

Up until now I wasn't sure how ugly this would get, but my guess now is pretty ugly.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)