Perfidious Obama, Assaultive Obama

It goes without saying that if you're trying to unseat an incumbent, you have to portray that opponent as having failed in fundamental ways -- pursued policies that were ineffectual or counterproductive, wasted resources, wounded relationships, shown lack of resolve or energy, etc. etc.

For the past twenty years, Republicans, schooled in large part by Newt Gingrich, never stop there. Opponents in their portrayal are always depraved, malevolent, disloyal, craven, fundamentally hostile to real Americans.  

Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, Jamelle Bouie and others have laid out with precision the ways in which Romney taps into birther and Manchurian candidate fantasies about Obama to portray him as unAmerican, socialist, committed to "European' values, sympathetic to or submissive before aliens of various stripes, hostile to the upstanding businessmen who make America great.  I want to paint with a broader brush for a moment.  It seems to me that Romney's cartoon villain Obama has two main sets of vices.

Romney will be at pains not to "flatten" the middle class

Jamelle Bouie is confident that Romney will respond to Perry's flat tax proposal with one of his own:

Of course, with prominent Republicans pushing for a flat tax, it’s likely that Romney will relent and release his own proposal for instituting a single income tax rate. As The Times writes, “Lately…his tone has been more positive. ‘I love a flat tax,’ he said in August.”

 Jamelle, I'm going to have to bump Romney-readings with you.