Is The GOP Afraid to Go After Obama?

Apparently. A recent GOP conference call had their "experts" telling the party bigwigs not to go after Obama personally because America still loves him and feels sorry for him. Jim Geraghty is not a believer:

Chalk me up as one of those guys who thought that despite his obvious liberalism, Obama might be a good and decent man outside of the political realm. But now three years of his presidency suggest he does have some serious character flaws. Part of me marvels that so many still find him so likeable, and I can't help but get the feeling that a lot of people are wedded to the notion that the first African-American president of the United States would be a healing, wise, visionary statesman, like the second coming of Martin Luther King, Jr., instead of a over-promising, under-delivering, self-pitying narcissist.

Three years of Obama's presidency have shown us that he can rarely, if ever, admit a mistake. His statements suggest he thinks all of those who disagree with him are either uninformed and misguided or morally wrong and malicious.Clearly he is a narcissist, even by the standards of politicians, and he revels in seeing throngs of people chanting his name and seeing him in messianic terms and has no objection to being marketed that way. (Mark Edward Taylor'sBranding Obamessiah is on my must-read list.) 

When a law inconveniences him, such as the War Powers Act, he ignores it. His enthusiasm for czars, recess appointments, executive orders, etc., suggests an impatience with constitutional limits and traditional checks on presidential power, a force he denounced as too powerful when George W. Bush occupied the Oval Office. His willingness to have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid write the details of Obamacare and the stimulus suggests either a foolish trust in those lawmakers' wisdom or a certain intellectual laziness -- an impatience in dealing with details and a naïve faith that everything would turn out all right. His "expiration date" phenomenon and his "under the bus" philosophy suggest he sees everything from past political positions to allies to even his own grandmother as expendable in his pursuit of fulfilling what he needs at any given moment. I've said that his furious schedule of fundraisers is driven less by a need for campaign cash than for his ego's need for constant praise and adoration.

Finally, while a lot of folks think he gets too much grief about his golf habits, I marvel that his favorite pastime is a hobby associated with rich Republicans and the folks he usually denounces, and that he indulges his expensive habit so regularly while presiding over what looks like a four-year recession. Then throw in the Martha's Vineyard vacations and the 17-day Christmas vacations, and you get the feeling Obama doesn't really like the "working" part of being president.

Finally, Americans feel sorry for Obama? Forget everything else, this might be the sign that we've really gone too far to be saved. He spent two years doing everything possible to get this job. He and his allies endlessly assured us that he knew what he was doing, that he could deliver what no one else could, and that we would see results in miraculous terms: Heal the sick, stop the oceans' rise, and all that. And now we feel sorry for him? We pity him?

We shouldn't need to go after Obama personally given his record of failure in office, but much of that failure is directly due to Obama's socialist beliefs, not to mention his enormous ego. The GOP should be able to make their case against Obama based on actual results, but I'm beginning to wonder if they even have the stomach for that?