Obama an easy target for Republicans

Mike Lupica
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Originally Published: Friday, November 25 2011, 7:00 AM



This is America on Thanksgiving Week in 2011, the real start of the parade route in Homestead, Fla. The First Lady of the country shows up at NASCAR as a way of honoring veterans through the fine Joining Forces initiative and hears boos. The rabble in the media who hate her and hate her husband much more immediately lead the cheers on that.

Another Michele — Bachmann shows up on the Jimmy Fallon show and the band The Roots thinks it is funny to play “Lyin’ Ass B---h” as ’sher introduction.

This is America, Thanksgiving 2011, when a television host suggests that pepper spray, practically used for sport at UC-Davis, is really nothing more than a food product. Yeah Megyn, so is arsenic. You really want Ms. Kelly to stick to the news, because if she ever gets her own show on the Food Channel, look out.

This is the America where Newt Gingrich — who ought to be bragging he was a lobbyist for outfits like Freddie Mac, lobbyists now running the government these days more than the real government does leads all Republicans who want to be the next President.

Gingrich continues to pass judgment on protesters, and stake out his turf with whatever the old Moral Majority calls itself these days, after going through so much of his public life with the morals and restraint of an overserved frat boy.

The rabble wants to attack the current President and First Lady for everything, including what’s on the menu at the White House, but defend a phony like Frat Boy Gingrich to the end. Why? You know why. Gingrich is one of theirs.

You can’t say this enough: How much more hysterical would the Rush O’Hannitys be if Barack Obama, not Gingrich, was in the record books with three wives and all those girls on the side?

You know what they would all do, they would want to be on radio and TV more than they already are, spend more time than they do already trying to save the country — in their view, anyway — from Obama.

You want to know why so many in and out of the government are threatened by Occupy Wall Street? Because the people in the street are making more sense than the gasbag pundits and politicians about how this country has lost its way, that’s why.


At least the protesters are trying to do that before starting Thanksgiving dinner earlier than most getting pepper sprayed or food producted — at UC-Davis.

Of course, the pundits and politicians from the other side want to shove Obama and the Democrats toward Occupy Wall Street with both hands, because that is just another way to hate this President. And please understand, this isn’t some rousing defense of the job Barack Obama has done, because whatever his best intentions were and are, he hasn’t been a great President or even close.

But always remember he was declared a failure by his opponents before he even started the job. Had to be defeated as soon as he had won. Now his opponents want anybody from that stage to take the White House back from him, and frankly don’t care which one they send out to do it.

Herman Cain: Who actually looks more comfortable answering a question about the women he’s accused of harassing than one about foreign policy.

Or Romney: Who tries to give you a head fake on everything including his own first name.

Or Gingrich: Who sticks to his story that he only screwed around the way he did because he was so darn passionate about America. Somehow he gets to the top of the polls with material like this, might win the Iowa caucus and go to New Hampshire a bigger front-
runner than ever.

The other day I am talking to a friend of mine who has been around American politics for 40 years, known Presidents from both parties, some of whom he can still call up on the phone as they all watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade of American politics pass by. And the guy said this:

If you want to know just how bad things have gotten, just look at the rarified air that Newt f---ing Gingrich is currently breathing.”

Still: Gingrich hears his cheers these days as Michelle Obama hears the boos that she heard with Jill Biden before a NASCAR race, and nobody really cares to mention afterward that these two women were present to honor American troops.

Less than a year out from the next presidential election, Mrs. Obama heard what we all hear these days: more yelling. The yelling only stopped long enough Thursday for everybody to say grace, in an increasingly graceless time in America.