Classy

Let's say there are two grocery stores in your neighborhood.  To be honest, there isn't much difference between them, except for the signs over the door and one has a few more organic vegetables than the other.  One of them is the dominant store in your town, and you've been buying your groceries from them for a few years.  To be honest, you aren't happy with the quality of their wares or the service you get.

So when the other store gives itself a makeover and has a bit of publicity, you decide to go over there one morning.  You buy a few things, and while things are pretty much the same as at the other store, your experience is marginally better, so you start doing regular business with them.  You notice that there are a lot of people who start shopping at the second shop at about the same time you do.

A few weeks later, you get an email from a friend.  It's basically asking "Have you seen this?".  The first store, the one you left because of service, price, and quality, has put up a big billboard in front of their store.  On the billboard is your name, your picture, the times you went to the other store, and the amount you spent.  It also details the things you bought, and even goes so far as to make aspersions about your character based on any run-ins you'd had with store management over the years.  They have a little section for each person who has stopped doing business with them in favor of the new store.

For a grocery store, this is pretty crass and classless. For a President of the United States, it's shameful.

President Obama and his re-election campaign are doing something very similar when it comes to people who are donating money to the Romney campaign.  The campaign's website is singling out individual donors to Mr. Romney and impugning their motivations and character for committing the sin of supporting Obama's opponent. 

These are not the actions of a man and an administration that recognize the rights of citizens to support whatever political candidate or cause they want.  This is voter intimidation just as certainly as if he had posted thugs at the polls with cudgels. 

I don't think it's a surprise to anyone reading this that I don't care for Mr. Obama, his politics, his values, or his work ethic.  I don't have a much better opinion of Mr. Romney.  I've been very torn as to whether to vote for Romney this year.  I don't like his record as governor of Massachusetts.  Nothing he has said during the primaries has convinced me that he has changed enough since then to make me want to support him.

But I will be damned if I will be intimidated by some Chicago machine thug from questioning and opposing President Obama, no matter who I vote for in November.  Things like this make me want to vote for Romney if for no other reason than to spit in the eye of the President's campaign. 

Want to see me cut my nose to spite my face, President Obama?  Keep pulling stuff like this.