Left's Desperate Search for Romney Gaffe on Syria, Bayonets, Etc.

You know the Obama camp is getting desperate when the left starts searching for gaffes by Republican Mitt Romney where there were none.

This morning, Obama fans are yukking it up on social media over “bayonets,” as if it was Romney who mentioned them, instead of President Barack Obama who had suggested, falsely, that the military no longer uses them. In fact, as AWR Hawkins points out, the military uses more bayonets today than it did a century ago.

(The mistake about bayonets was only one among many in Obama’s retort to Romney’s criticism of defense cuts. One hopes that Obama merely muffed the delivery of that prepared put-down line, because if not, the ignorance of the commander-in-chief about the military is astounding.)

Another theme is Romney’s supposed ignorance about geography, after the Republican challenger described Syria as Iran’s point of access to “the sea.” It was apparent–or so I thought, at least–that Romney was referring to the Mediterranean, which is of strategic importance to Iran in its quest for regional hegemony.

On the contrary, according to friends on Facebook and elsewhere, who helpfully pointed out that Iran has access to the Caspian Sea to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south–two entirely uncontroversial facts that are supposedly evidence the Romney is “not ready” for the job. (Perhaps it would help if he spoke Austrian.)

This is silliness, and reveals just how hard Obama fans are working to try to persuade themselves that he has the election in the bag, when in fact he has never recovered from his shocking first debate and Romney and Ryan have more than held their own in each of the subsequent contests.

Last night, Obama needed to force a major error by Romney–and failed. Instead, he came off looking cheap and overly aggressive, and the left knows it–which is why outfits like the New Yorker, among others, are attempting to laugh it off.

Democrats are still clinging to the caricature they painted, with the help of the media, over several months of an opponent, alternately cruel and bumbling, that could not possibly make the case for a different path. In the space of a few short weeks, Romney burst that bubble and showed the American people an alternative.

A real gaffe is something more on the order of Obama’s attempt to claim that Congress was to blame for the defense sequester, even though he proposed it and signed it. What that reveals, apart from President Obama’s dishonesty, is his failure to grapple with a debt situation so grave it threatens our national security.

That lack of leadership is what the American people have seen in the past two weeks–not just at the debates themselves, but compounded by Obama’s post-debate trash talk and pettiness. 

The damage is done, and Mitt Romney is looking far more confident going into the home stretch. And while the left is making up gaffes, the Romney campaign is sweeping up votes.