Mitt Romney was very wise to pivot on Barack Obama's impromptu statement that "voting is the best revenge" and frame the campaign in the final days as a choice between that negative message and Romney's "love of country."
I wouldn't say that if I thought Obama's statement was merely a slip of the tongue. Rather, I believe that in another unscripted moment, he once again revealed who he really is and the essence of his mindset.
When his soul mate and spouse said that her husband's ascendancy was the first time she'd been proud of America in her adult life, she wasn't just throwing out words. She was telling us who she is and what kind of hang-ups she has about pre-Obama America.
At the time she made the statement, she was on the stump representing her husband and speaking for him. They are of one mind on this point.
It is also no coincidence that Obama spent all those years at the feet of the America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, before that, mentors such as the Marxist Franklin Marshall Davis. Wright's sermons inspired Obama's book title, for heaven's sake, and informed his political attitudes and reinforced his worldview.
Without revisiting all the evidence pointing to Obama's grudge against pre-Obama America, we only need remind ourselves of his pre-election comment that we were "five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
That was a chilling statement and unmistakable in its meaning. Obama didn't like the America that currently existed, and he had ambitions not just to tweak it or implement a few salutary reforms but to fundamentally change it. He wasn't just talking about getting the economy growing again after the financial meltdown. He was determined to implement structural changes across the board to exact "economic justice" and "social justice" — a pair of familiar lyrics from every leftist radical's hymnal.
It would be one thing if Obama had made that statement during slavery or before the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments or even before the vast array of civil rights legislation and regulation in this country. But he made it in 2008, after all those constitutional and legislative changes had long since occurred and a few days before a clear majority of voting Americans elected him to be president of the United States.
In office, Obama has also betrayed his grudge-oriented mindset. He never really sought true bipartisanship. From day one, it was his way or the highway. Nowhere was this more striking than his dictatorial approach to Obamacare, which he willingly crammed down the throats of a dissenting American public. He was not a man who was leading America toward positive change but one who was forcibly imposing his radical will on America and completely unwilling to budge when challenged. "I'm the president."
Let's also not forget that during his first two years in office at least, Obama did get his way legislatively. He passed his enormously wasteful stimulus bill, the Dodd-Frank financial reform fiasco and Obamacare, and he pushed through all kinds of green energy projects, attacked and greatly damaged the oil, coal and natural gas industries, expanded dependency programs, stoked racial and class resentments, downscaled our military forces, and otherwise spent federal dollars as if he were determined to bankrupt the United States.
After all of this, he has nothing positive to show in his record. The economy is still in shambles with no end in sight. Yet he has given us no specifics of what he'd do in a second term except more of the same. In his words, "let's not turn back now." Really? Not turn back from policies that are destroying our economy and bankrupting us?
Economic results are not what he's after, folks. He wants revenge — against an America he believes has been unfair and sinful in the past, a nation that has consumed too much of the world's resources and been an international bully. And he's now outright admitted he wants his voters to help him get that revenge.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is bullish on America. He's proud of its founding and its founding principles. He loves and embraces its free market tradition. He is confident in the private sector and believes that the road to economic recovery lies in unleashing the private sector from the oppressive boot of the federal government. He wants America to be strong again.
It was brilliant for Romney to reframe this campaign as between one man marshaling his forces to exact revenge on America and the other leading his supporters to restore our beloved America.
There is no question which of the two candidates presented the more convincing final argument. Romney is offering a positive future; Obama is assuring us continued failure. Vote — and pray.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, "The Great Destroyer," reached No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
