VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: IGNORE OBAMA’S SPEECH:

We all know what is coming in 2012 — the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama’s rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama’s impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior. . . .

And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama’s own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style (“I hate George Bush. There, I said it”) of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents (“Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator”). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was “effeminate,” Vice President Cheney was a “militant,” the younger Bush was the “worst” president, and Israel is an “apartheid” state.

Running dogs, I think they used to call them.