No one on his side will ever report them, but not everyone is an Obama loyalist.

The one sentence in Morrissey’s report that is demonstrably risible is: “People get annoyed when a politician repeatedly insults their intelligence.”

They do? Since when? You couldn’t possibly be talking about the AMERICAN people, Ed, with whom the surest road to political success is to routinely insult what passes for their intelligence.

Gore and Kerry came close to winning despite repeated lies and contradictions - Gore in fact won the popular vote. Both of them routinely contradicted not just previously held positions, but previously cast votes from their time in in government. (In fact both of them were so damn dumb that they apparently were quite surprised to find that votes cast in the congress and senate are recorded, and can be referred to. Holy cow - that’s not fair!)

The important part of that is not how dumb they were, or how routinely willing they were to insult the voter’s intelligence, but that they both made contests out of it.

It would be good if insulting the voter’s intelligence meant something, but if it does it’ll be the first time.

You are so right. The second method implies quite clearly that the listener is stupid and/or unable to detect similarities and differences in meaning. It is commonly used by people who are desperate to appear intelligent and don’t mind making others look bad.

And that is why Obama is so proficient at using it. It’s as if that technique was tailor made for him.

Deana