It is an aphorism that if you want less of something, tax it.  Barack Obama wants higher taxes on job-creators and small business owners.  That's Barack in a nutshell.  He believes that it is unfair that some people, through toil and self-sacrifice, have more than others.  He's never toiled or sacrificed, so none of this should surprise.  It's interesting to note, however, that he has no problem with what he has accumulated over the years with little actual effort.  After all, he built that.

"You didn't build that," he said -- in four words defining his entire worldview.  It's not you; it's him.  I wonder if he said the same thing to one of his composite girlfriends.  "It's not you, baby.  It's me." 

The guy runs trillion-dollar deficits, and he thinks $14 billion a year will make all the difference.  And that revenue figure assumes that the rich are not smart enough to hide income, or wily enough to change their investing behavior in order to shield earnings from the tax man -- "one for you, nineteen for me." 

Why invest in a business, already burdened by the undefined costs of ObamaCare and the restricted access to capital and financing caused by Dodd-Frank, only to now reap the rapier wit of Obama's scorn and the parlous predations of the IRS?  Wait out the storm -- Barack is not forever.  

As our perniciously partisan, non-pusillanimous (at least domestically), overly patrician president was quick to point out, "[t]here is more than one way to skin a cat."  At the time, he was referring to his intention to bankrupt the coal industry in particular, and the fossil fuel industry in general.  Yet he's right: you have to play the game. 

Remember, his argument is that Republicans are willing to let the middle class suffer to protect tax cuts for their friends, the wealthiest Americans.  Taxing small business owners and America's most productive citizens will certainly be bad for economic growth and employment, but allowing him to control the discussion by defining the argument as Romney protecting cuts for the 1% is foolish.   

Romney needs to negate his argument, which is that he is a rich fat cat pimping for other rich fat cats.  He needs to define himself in this battle as defending all Americans of every economic stratus. 

The president is proposing a mere one-year extension of the middle- and lower-income rates, because after his re-election, he intends on letting those rates expire as well.  After all, that's where the money is.

Romney must insist on making all the rates permanent.  This will resonate with the middle class, who will bear the brunt when Barack lets the remaining Bush cuts expire.  He should release a campaign commercial where an announcer repeatedly questions why the president is pressing for only a one-year extension.  Explaining exactly how much the higher rates will cost everyone in the future is easy.       

Doing so will expose Obama's demagoguery on the issue and force him to either concede or defend his position, which he can't, unless he admits that his goal is to raise taxes on everyone by $1.35 trillion over 10 years.  This shifts control of the argument away from Barack and his ceaseless class warfare. 

Rating Romney

Romney should have never asked for an apology from Obama for the false Bain accusations.  It made him look weak.  The strong don't ask for apologies; they hit back. 

The day after Axelrod told him to stop whining and Wasserman Shultz told him to put on his "big boy" pants, he should have done exactly that.  He should have had ads running non-stop, featuring Reverend Jeremiah Wright doing his best "God damn America" shtick, with graphics on how Wright not only presided over the marriage of Barack and his bitter half, but baptized both Sasha and "spring break" Malia.  During the ad, the scroll should have explained how our "post-racial" president sat in a pew at Wright's church every Sunday for 20 years, listening to hate speech, yet heard nothing.  Timing the "heard nothing" to coincide with "God damn America" would have been nice.

When the complaints came in, Romney should have stepped to the podium and told Obama and his cacophonous cadre to stop whining.  And then turned and walked away.

As far as releasing two hundred years of his tax returns, don't.  The most secretive man to ever hold a position of power in the modern world, asking anyone to be an open book, is fifty shades of ridiculous.  If they want to see a million years of Romney's history, then Mitt should insist on seeing Obama's academic records, his medical records, the names of the dealers he bought drugs from when he was king of the "choom" gang, and every other thing he has spent so much effort and money keeping secret.

Throw in a couple of digs about his composite life, as explained in his autobiography...or memoir...or work of fiction.  Whatever it is, he probably didn't write it anyway.  Barack Obama is the true evaporated man.  He is a puddle on a hot summer day, wide and wet, yet with no depth and a short shelf life.  He epitomizes the empty suit of the no "there" there, there.

I am heartened by Romney's recent aggressiveness with his speech in Irwin, Pennsylvania and his no-holds-barred advertising, as well as the courage it took to go to the NAACP and not pander, but he needs to be quicker.  Everything Obama is going to say can be anticipated.  He's not that deep.  Mitt's campaign needs to be better-prepared and faster off the ball.  

Leaders like Obama use tactical misapplication of truth (lies) in order to gain advantage by defining the area of conflict and the field of battle.  Romney cannot take five days to respond to Obama's charges. 

Taking days to answer leaves the impression that he is inept and out of his element, unable to think on his feet and probably not up to the job as president.  Looking overmatched when doing battle with a lightweight like Barack Obama is quite the accomplishment.  Barack may be aggressive and relentless, but he is predictable and stale.

Mitt, you have the opportunity to define Barack Obama -- after all, who knows who he is, anyway?  You need to get mean and dirty.  Flood the airwaves with Barack playing golf, or on vacation, with unemployment numbers and deficit amounts streaming across the screen as a backdrop.  Run commercials letting Barack be Barack, with him, in his own words, explaining his politics of bitterness and envy.   

This could be the easiest campaign of your life, Mitt -- there is so much to use against our worst president.  You cannot play by some nonexistent set of rules while Barack, lacking an inner moral compass, constantly sinks to new lows.

If you want to be president -- and the lives of many Americans now depend upon your desire -- then you must learn how to fight. 

You need to stand up and tell Barack Obama, to his face, who and what he is.