The RNC and the Right Wing Noise machine has orchestrated a new crescendo of malice toward this President for ordinary things for any President to do, like taking a vacation (something they must begrudge any workers taking at all) and attacking this president for his travel around the country most recently during his bus tour. Only Republican Presidents are entitled to take vacations, and only Republican Presidents are allowed to travel around the country.
The RNC issued this document to guide talking points for Republicans to use in attacking Obama's bus tour: Debt-End Bus Tour pdf
From Rush Limbaugh on Monday:
RUSH: Okay, it appears there are two buses. Two buses for a three-day tour, and they bought 'em. Normally, they go out there and rent them. They bought two new buses, it appears, for Obama, and they're gonna be using 'em both.
RUSH: Normally you just go out and rent some buses, you decorate them inside whatever you want them to be. But this is $1.1 million each.
RUSH: So these buses were purchased back in April. Did they know back in April they're gonna be doing a meet-the-public tour in August? They might have. There's a lot of preplanning.
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Of course Rush doesn't mention that these two buses were built by the Secret Service for next years election campaign, with one of them slated to be used by the Republican Party's candidate for President. Rush would rather have his gullible listeners think that Obama frittering away $2.2 million dollars for buses to be used once for this 3 day tour.
From Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday:
RUSH:So it has been learned that the buses were made in Canada, some sort of a free trade agreement or some such thing.
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A Canadian company Prevost built the "outer shell" and a Tennessee company made and installed the interior. State of the art security and communications were also added to the two buses.
Super patriot Limbaugh drives around in a $450,000 German made Maybach 57.
How does Obama compare with past Presidents on presidential travel?
RNC attack on Obama’s bus tour ignores Bush’s political travel costs
Presidential trips in swing states in the year preceding an election are an established norm. A 2004 Brookings Institute paper compared the pre-reelection travel of presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and found that they both upped their travel, focusing on swing states, leading up to the election. If anything, an analytical look at Obama's predecessors shows that Bush is more guilty of "targeted" travel in his office leading up to election.
Between January 1 and May 31, 2004, Bush took 75 trips to 29 states, 56 percent of which were swing states. In the same time period in 1996, Clinton visited 25 states on 58 visits, 47 percent to swing states.
In June 2004, the Associated Press published a report saying that Bush had used his Air Force One privileges for campaign travel more often than any president in history.
The RNC's malice toward this President is hard to miss yet somehow the MSM acts like the constant stream of viscous smears coming from Republicans are nothing out of the ordinary.