It's been an article of faith on the wingnut fringe for some time that President Obama isn't a true American. Well, it looks like the Romney campaign is trying to tap into that sentiment. On a conference call with reporters, former White House chief of staff John Sununu, one of Romney's top surrogates, said that Obama needed to "learn how to be an American." No, I'm not kidding.
“The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build their businesses from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world,” Sununu said. “It is the American way, and I wish this president would wish how to learn how to be an American.”
Asked by a reporter to clarify his comment, Sununu said he had meant to criticize Obama’s understand of the American way of doing business.
“The president has to learn the American formula for creating business,” he said.
Sununu was referring to an Obama speech in Roanoke that has the wingers in a tizzy. During that speech, Obama said, "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." However, the wingers ripped the quote several miles out of context. Obama was pointing out--rightly--that government builds the infrastructure that makes entrepreneurship possible. But even if Obama had said that government builds business, saying he isn't really an American is several miles beyond the pale.
Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign has pounced.
Responding to Sununu's comments, Obama's campaign declared Team Romney had "officially gone off the deep end."
"The question is what else they'll pull to avoid answering serious questions about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital and investments in foreign tax havens and offshore accounts," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith wrote in a statement. "This meltdown and over-the-top rhetoric won't make things better – it only calls attention to how desperate they are to change the conversation."
Crickets so far from the Romney campaign. Looks like they didn't learn from how voters were repulsed by some of the horrible things that were heard at McCain rallies four years ago.