One step Forward!, 10 steps back.

Rumor is, Obama will go aggressive against Romney tonight,  a desperate candidate throwing red meat to his ideological base — the “47 %”, Bain Capital, tax returns, income disparity, and so on.   This despite the fact that the debate is supposed to be half on foreign policy, and Obama surely will have enough on his plate there.  Question is, what, if anything, has Romney prepared as a response.  My take is, he should await these attacks with a bit of relish, having devised the perfect counter punches to each one:

1) Bain creates jobs and in fact is at the very heart of the capitalist system:  waste is cut, adjustments made, and companies invested in either become more competitive and profitable or they don’t, suggesting that they’ve proven not viable in the current marketplace.  This is the natural order of capitalism.  And private equity investing in businesses is the lifeblood of a vibrant private sector economy.

Besides, was Obama aware that many of his own people worked with Bain?

2) 47% of the people in the US don’t pay federal income tax. That’s a function of several factors, not the least of which is the dismal jobs situation.  That Obama continues to rely on the votes of those people by pushing welfare rather than by pushing for a broader tax base — which would signal that more people have jobs and less are dependent on government — is a testament to the cynicism of the Democrat party and the failure of Obama’s policies.  Romney wasn’t diminishing the 47%; he was articulating how the failed policies of this Administration has put them in the position where they are considering voting for an unsustainable safety net because they’ve lost faith in what was once the most robust economy in the world.  They are acting out of what they perceive as a kind of survival instinct. And rather than trying to sell them on the promise of America, Obama seeks instead to keep them dependent on a government who, because it has so molested small business and so weakened the private sector with its policies and regulations, has created the very conditions it now hopes to exploit electorally.  That Obama even chose to bring up the number in this debate means that he’s more interested in politicizing it than fixing the underlying causes.

3) Between taxes and charity, Mitt Romney gave away nearly 60% of his income.  When is enough enough?  And why is the President so interested in Romney’s past tax returns, but yet has been willing to pay millions to keep his own school records hidden from public view?  Mitt Romney’s tax returns have no impact whatever on job creation or the dismal economic record of this Administration.  Perhaps if Obama spent less time worrying about Romney’s tax returns and more time, say, working on a reasonable budget, or attending intel meetings, we wouldn’t now find our country in a state of decline, and our foreign policy in a state of abject chaos.

And of course, there are more:  the debt per U.S. citizen has increased 45 percent since President Obama took office.  And household incomes have fallen.

Which reduces Obama to running ads suggesting Mitt Romney will deny women cancer screenings and will rape them with ultrasound wands.  This is ludicrous, and Romney should bring up the nature of these ads and mock them.  He should then note that, were Obama truly concerned about women, he should explain how he’s going to get the hundreds of thousands of them now out of jobs back into the workforce.  He should explain how he’ll lower gas prices and energy prices, which in turn impact the costs of food, clothing, heating and cooling a home, planning a family budget.

You see, Romney should say, what you call a Republican War on Women, I call a Democratic Obsession with reducing women to their reproductive organs. It’s a diminution of women, and it’s an ugly and cynical attack on Republicans, many of whom, truth be told, have mothers, wives, daughters — and are not engaged in any kind of war against them.  Isn’t it time to stop trying to divide Americans up by gender, ethnicity, and class, and work again to reestablish the American Dream, which, because it includes no set of fixed class system, has drawn so many people to this country?

4) Income disparity:  here’s the question to ask the President:  does he think the average American would like a higher standard of living for himself and his family — even if he knows that someone, somewhere, is better off than he?  Or would he be willing to live in a more uniform society, where the “income disparity is not nearly so great,” but that comes at the cost of attacking the capitalist system that has provided the highest standard of living in the world.  In Indian, the “rich” would here in the US be considered poor, for instance.  And in countries like Cuba and North Korea, there’s very little income disparity — but a whole lot of equally shared misery.

— Except for those in the government, of course, who police the whole wealth distribution apparatus.

Since Obama took office and began his campaign to end income disparity — which is a “problem” only when one assumes at the outset that there is finite wealth to go around (that is, that no new wealth can be created) — 15% of Americans have fallen into poverty, and food stamps now got 48 million people.   Meanwhile, the number of millionaires has dropped.

Is this what Obama means by closing the income disparity gap — creating a uniform set of misery and dependency?  Because a Romney Administration, like JFK and Reagan before him, believes that a rising tide will raise all boats.  Whereas Obama seems to think that the definition of “social justice” is that every boat should be made equally leaky.  For fairness.

Counterpunch.  Obama is on the ropes and will be looking to take wild swings.  The media narrative will be that he won — regardless of what viewers think.  And we’ll have days of “Comeback Kid,” “There’s the brilliant Obama we all knew and through our allegiance behind in 2008” stories to take Benghazi and the other scandals out of the news.  At least, until Obama declares they’ve found, and killed in a drone strike, those responsible for attacks on the consulate.  Which I suspect will be timed to bridge the gap to the release of the “Obama Killed Osama” movie, itself slated for release right before the election.

Romney must keep the demeanor he used in the last debate. But he also must show he won’t stand for lies or distortions of facts, and he must be willing to dirty box with the President.  The counterpunch openings will be there all night.  Romney must not be afraid to let his hands fly at every such opening.

(thanks to Darleen for the Kirsanow link)