It seems many Republicans are upset about the fact that Obama is successfully introducing the real Willard to the American public:
Conservatives have lit up talk radio programs across the country, worrying whether Mr. Romney’s business record has been “Swift Boated,” referring to attacks waged against Senator John Kerry’s military record in 2004.
The Romney campaign headquarters in Boston has been inundated with advice and criticism from donors and supporters who worry that Mr. Romney has lost an opportunity to introduce himself on his own terms.
“Team Obama is doing just what we did in 2004, which is to define the opposition furiously and early,” said Mark McKinnon, a strategist who worked on George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. “Most voters don’t have a deep sense of Romney other than he’s not Obama. And in this cycle, that may be enough, but it’s a very risky approach.”
(via NYTimes.com)
Many years ago the Republicans tried to introduce the term “bork” for unfair, spurious or groundless attacks on a political figure. It never caught on, and was certainly never used by Democrats, because it referred to the confirmation hearings of one Robert Bork, who was denied a Supreme Court judgeship not based on any lies about him, but on a cumulation of truths that convinced even normally spineless Democrats that he should be rejected.
The term “swift-boat” on the other hand, introduced by the Democrats and others of like mind, has now apparently been adopted by the Republicans, implying a recognition that the campaign they waged against Kerry was bottomed in lies, something they would have denied with vehemence at the time. Alternatively, of course, they might be conceding that Obama’s claims about Romney are true (which they are) but that there is something still unfair about them. That dog, of course, won't hunt. In truth and in fact, Romney is not being swift boated. He is being exposed for precisely what he is. Kerry was portrayed as something he was not. But when the Republicans use the term, they are confessing to their past sins.
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