Martin, Barton and Romney

He never did give us a New Deal, but President Obama did don the persona of FDR in his speech today to the American Society of News Editors, presaging the political campaign to come. 

In remarks that seemed to have echoes of FDR's famous "Martin, Barton and Fish" address in 1940, Obama's opening line of attack was pure mockery. Obama said Paul Ryan's budget plan is so extreme that it makes "the Contract with America look like the New Deal." He lampooned Gingrich as "a renowned liberal" who himself called last year's Ryan plan "radical." And he poked fun at Romney for saying passage of the budget would be "marvelous, which isn't a word you hear often with respect to budgets." Comedic pause. "It's not even a word you hear all that often generally."

Hahahahaha. Actually the journalists WERE laughing pretty hard.

Obama's basic argument was that the GOP is run by right-wing lunatics, as evidenced by the Ryan budget, and Mitt Romney's now one of them. To which the president added for good measure: "It's laughable."

Game on.