…enraged.

Naturally, just like everything else out of Washington you can interpret Obamacare’s effect on Medicare two ways. The Democrat way is that the $716 billion “cut” Obamacare entails for Medicare is merely a reduction in the growth of the program, and why should that be considered a cut?

But they’re not proposing any other such “cuts,” are they? There’s no holding down of any spending baselines in any other expenditure segments in any of Obama’s budget documents, are there?

So by that standard, yeah – it’s a “cut.” And furthermore, when you apply that “cut” toward funding Obamacare, which is an even bigger entitlement than Medicare is, it’s not like you’re doing as Obama’s gang claims – namely, seeking cost controls.

Particularly when what’s getting cut in Medicare is Medicare Advantage. Talk to people on Medicare and they’ll usually tell you Medicare Advantage is the best part of Medicare. Democrats call that “giveaways to insurance companies,” which is absurd.

So along comes Romney and his gang of operatives, and they take one look at this situation and decide to just go for the jugular. They did it pretty well in the primary campaign; when they decided they were going to take Newt Gingrich down they latched on to some things Gingrich said and did, gave them a bit of a spin and then bombed the airwaves with ads to force the message out. Obama happens to be an even more inviting target than Gingrich, because while most GOP voters out there recognized Gingrich had some warts on him they also appreciated the work he did in Congress in the 1990’s.

Is that really true of Obama? With his record? Obama seems to have maybe 45 percent of the vote he can depend on. The rest of the country could very well buy into an ad like this.

Particularly when Obama’s response to this ad involves his attempting to explain Obamacare, which the public has already decided isn’t any good.

It’s a brilliant line for Romney. Particularly when it’s actually defensive, because it’s designed to eliminate the attacks the Romney camp knew were coming from Obama right after he picked Paul Ryan as his VP nominee. The entire country knew Mediscare was going to be unleashed, and Obama’s campaign didn’t disappoint. The morning Ryan was announced they brought it up.

So for Romney to throw out $716 billion in cuts to Medicare, and force the Democrats to explain why that’s a lie, is a pretty good tactical move. Not just because it plays into the whole “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” cliche, but also because it gets in Obama’s head. We own you, the ad says. You’re so weak you can’t even use Medicare against us.

And that’s why the Obama people hate it. They can’t stand the idea that their opponent thinks he’s better. Remember, this group has never had a fair fight – the only time they didn’t either have the decks cleared for them or an opponent who was afraid to run an aggressive campaign against them was in 2000, when Obama ran against Bobby Rush for a Congressional seat and got slaughtered. Ed Klein’s book The Amateur says that after that race, when Obama had more or less bankrupted himself, his wife almost left him.

After that, he took no chances. When Obama ran for the Senate in 2004, his people got the divorce records of first his Democrat primary opponent and then his general election Republican opponent unsealed, spilling forth salacious material that ruined those campaigns and allowed him to coast to election. And in 2008, Obama got a major delegate advantage by busing in people at caucuses like the one in Iowa and a number of Western states, then managing to freeze Hillary Clinton out of what would have been a win in Michigan. He then drew John McCain, the worst GOP nominee since Alf Landon, who hideously mismanaged his fundraising by expecting the federal government to do it for him and ended up giving Obama a colossal advantage in resources.

Romney is nothing like the previous opponents. There’s no evidence of any skeletons in Romney’s closet, Romney’s going to have considerably more money than Obama will, Romney’s VP makes Obama’s VP look like the moron he is, Romney is willing to hammer Obama on his record and Romney is as or even more aggressive  than Obama as a campaigner (which is a pleasant surprise since earlier in this campaign many pundits were casting Romney as a wimp on the trail).

So the more aggressive Romney gets, the weaker Obama will look. Sending Joe Biden to get blown away by Isaac won’t change that.