Demonizing Obama.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - President Barack Obama - Editorial

The anti-Obama rhetoric that pours out of the mouths of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney is way over the top right now.

Gingrich keeps calling Obama a danger to the country.

Santorum keeps predicting a cataclysm if Obama is reelected.

Gingrich says Obama is not defending "our religion"--as if the United States has an official religion (other than patriotism or football).

Santorum says Obama practices a "phony religion."

Romney says Obama is "waging a war on religion."

Gingrich says Obama isn't protecting the United States from Islamic terrorists. Maybe he should fact check that one with a guy named bin Laden.

Meanwhile, Santorum compares Obama to Hitler.

Romney, for his part, says if Obama is reelected, the United States will be hit with a nuclear weapon.

Not to be outdone, Gingrich declared, at the Arizona debate, that "all of us are more at risk today, men and women, boys and girls, than at any time in the history of this country."

Oh, really?

How about during the Civil War?

How about during World War Il?

How about during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Gingrich has taken this scaremongering to the end of the line, saying that "defeating Barack Obama becomes, in fact, a duty of national security."

This is toxic stuff.

There are a lot of crazy people in America, and a lot of guns that are easily accessible to them.

With rhetoric like this, some nut might think he has "a duty" to take matters into his own hands.

Gingrich and Santorum and Romney are creating a very volatile atmosphere in this country, and they owe Obama and the nation a more temperate tone.

The Presidential race this year has already turned into a game of the obscenely rich, as Ruth Conniff and Jim Hightower note in their columns this month and as Meher Ahmad and Elizabeth DiNovella note in our editorial Comment. If we are to have any hope of establishing a real democracy...