Watch what you wish for, GOPers

The GOP faced a challenge in shaping its four year campaign to defeat President Obama in 2012: some of its favorite themes had a poor chance of working.

Take that fine old standby, personal character assassination. When Clinton was the target it was a snap. He was quite the hound dog. Best of all, he lied about it under oath, giving the Republicans an excuse to impeach the President, even though what he lied about had exactly nothing to do with his presidential duties. They used personal embarrassment to set a trap, using the power of prosecutors to ask questions under oath that have nothing to do with the case being prosecuted.

But here we have a guy--President Obama with the effrontery to be a model husband and father, never divorced, never unfaithful, devoted to his kids, and raising them in a way any American conservative could be proud of.

Then there's the "soft on war" trope. Every Democratic president has gotten accused of being a peacenik. And then President Obama has the nerve to get Osama, send squadrons of UAVs over Pakistan and Yemen and elsewhere, nailing Al Quaeda honchos left and right. He even OK'd nailing some Somali pirates between the eyes out on the high seas, and upped the ante in Afghanistan. Bummer.

So now personal character is no longer spoken of. And to prove it, that Republican hound dog Newt Gingrich is leading in GOP polls right now. Whether he gets the nomination or not, the fact that he leads shows that Republicans could care less about personal character. They only talk about it when it suits them.

And the same goes for warlike manliness. Bush II had the fighter pilot swagger down, but wasn't competent as Commander in Chief. Not when he went to war with the wrong country. I mean, when the cops bust into the house next to the house they have the warrant to bust into it's bad enough. But when our President busts into the wrong country and costs us a trillion+ dollars and thousand of US lives, and tens of thousands maimed as well, it would really, really, really help if all that blood and treasure were expended on and in the country that had actually attacked us. No Democratic president in the last century has committed such a colossal blunder--especially when he systematically ignored all the info we had at the time proving that it was the wrong country. No wonder Saddam was surprised when we invaded. Just like the people in the wrong house.

There's plenty the GOP can and will use against Obama in the next election. They'll even try to besmirch his personal character. But that at least won't stick.