Politics

Steyn questions president’s negative tactics: ‘Obama is hope and change, or he is nothing’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Hugh Hewitt’s Thursday radio program, National Review columnist Mark Steyn. author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” said President Barack Obama was making a mistake by going negative in the final weeks of the election season.

“[I] think that approach six months ago might actually have done something, because the problem with Obama is he can’t really run as Nixon,” Steyn said. “Obama is ‘hope and change,’ or he is nothing. He has to be the guy, as one of those idiot journalists said, whatever it was, four years ago, ‘like a god coming down and bestriding the planet.”

Obama has taken to derisively diagnosing rival Mitt Romney with “Romnesia,” drawing laughs at rallies but scorn from observers who had hoped the president would elevate political discourse in 2008.

“The minute he starts playing small ball, the minute he starts making all these snippy little remarks, it’s over for him,” Steyn said. “He can’t be a dark and malevolent and attack ad kind of candidate. He has to be Mr. ‘Sunny,’ Mr. ‘Hope,’ and Mr. ‘Change.’ And because he didn’t run on any of that, and he’s basically left at 10 days before the election to resurrect that character, I think was a fatal miscalculation.”

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Jeff Poor