Obama's record of political slander and demonization

Karl Rove:

This has been a bad year for President Obama. He lost the sequester PR battle, failed to pass gun control, stalled progress on immigration reform, and handled Syria ineptly. There's been tremendous problems implementing his signature health law, whose unpopularity is rising. Mr. Obama's job-approval numbers have been dropping, down in the Gallup poll to 46% now from 56% in January.

In the face of these setbacks, the president has reverted to form: dishonest and ad hominem attacks against his political opposition. To listen to his rhetoric, there are no honest differences with Republicans; his opponents are not wrong but wicked, motivated by vicious desires to hurt their fellow Americans and the country.

In an Aug. 9 press conference, Mr. Obama made an outrageous assertion that "The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care." Over the past 10 days he has stepped up his attack.

At a White House event on Sept. 16, Mr. Obama said that the goal of Republicans is "making sure that 30 million people don't get health insurance." How far are they willing to go to achieve this? "They're willing to tank the entire economy," he said. The GOP, he said, "promises economic chaos" if it doesn't get its way. Thirty million, incidentally, is the number of people the Congressional Budget Office says will still lack health insurance even when ObamaCare is fully implemented.
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In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama declared that Republican opposition to his budget and debt-ceiling requests is based in the GOP's desire to "actually plunge this country back into recession—all to deny the basic security of health care to millions of Americans." And at the Business Roundtable meeting on Wednesday a week ago, the president claimed the GOP's aims were even grander and more malevolent. Republicans want to default on the debt to "cause a world-wide financial crisis."

Mr. Obama also told the Roundtable CEOs that "You have never seen in the history of the United States . . . the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a governing party." Actually, we have.

In March 2006, then Sen. Obama wanted to defund the Iraq war but lacked the votes to do this directly. So he tried the indirect route by rallying Senate Democrats to reject Mr. Bush's debt-ceiling increase. Imagine the howls if Mr. Bush had described Mr. Obama's action as a deliberate effort to default, plunge America into recession, and cause a world-wide crisis?
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Obama lacks a talent for compromise and reaching agreement.  His response to his failure is to revert to childish name calling and impugning the motives of his opponents.  This is the opposite of leadership and has no chance of getting to yes on a deal.