The Man in the Empty Chair
(I)t was very unexpected. But memorable! And the perfect distillation of the Republican campaign.
Mitt Romney doesn’t use a chair. But he, too, is having a pretend argument with an invented friend, Imaginary Barack. Imaginary Barack who apologizes for America. Who hates business and old people. Who robs Medicare, closes auto factories, kowtows to the Chinese. Who is the sole reason for the soaring national debt, high unemployment, the housing bust, etc etc.
To Republicans, the president has been a mystery creature for a while. Think back to 2008: Remember the right-wing, talk-radio bafflement about Mr. Obama’s rise. Who is this guy, they asked? Why don’t we know anything about him? When the cipher beat John McCain, disbelief turned to fury.
The last four years have been an extended exercise in Republican denialism:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/the-man-in-the-empty-chair/