Obama crooning,  GOP gone wild

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Updated: March 28, 2012 8:05AM

He may not be fiddling, but he is singing the blues, while the GOP burns. The man just can’t stop singing. First he serenaded his wayward base, via a stanza from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Then, last week he was chirping “Sweet Home Chicago” at a White House blues concert.

Barack Obama is singing and swinging. While the president still faces a long, hard slog to a November re-election victory, the increasingly fractious Republican nominating contest must be music to his ears.

Little wonder. His crooning is inspired by the feckless foursome: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

While Obama is leading a charm offensive, his Republican critics are in a knife fight. The GOP presidential sweepstakes is a cacophony of bureaucratese, shameless pandering and transparent spinning. Last Wednesday, at the 20th televised debate of the nominating contest, the remaining contestants continued tearing each other to slivers. Their bickering is producing enough sound bites for an entire You Tube channel. It’s the GOP gone wild.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that Romney had tin ear. Allow me to amend that notion: They all need hearing aids.

Take the recent contretemps over birth control, choice and abortion. A firestorm erupted after the White House announced it would require that religiously affiliated institutions include contraceptives in their health-care coverage. Republicans shrieked the policy was breach of religious freedom, while Democrats, particularly women, retorted it was an issue of health and choice.

Obama quickly recalibrated and devised a new position that shaved off the lion’s share of the opposition. Progressive Catholics and health-care institutions applauded the move. Obama heard the opposition, admitted his error and moved on it. He listened.

At Wednesday’s debate, his opponents were not moving on. They spent a goodly portion of the two-hour debate trying to out-pander each other on issues like a woman’s right to choose, out-of wedlock births and abstinence.

“When we have programs that teach abstinence in our schools, the liberals go crazy and try to stop them,” Romney declared.

Abstinence? That’s so 1970s.

Newt “serial adulterer” Gingrich claimed that as a state senator Obama had once voted for a bill that amounted to “legalizing infanticide” and designed “to kill babies who survived the abortion.”

The Twitter sphere went viral with comments from irate women who couldn’t believe four tone-deaf white guys were pontificating and posturing about women’s personal health and childbearing decisions.

My favorite debate moment was CNN moderator John King’s puffy assignment to the feckless four: Describe yourself in one word. King even gave them a commercial break to consider this weighty challenge.

Paul came back with “consistent.” Santorum said he had “courage,” Romney was “resolute” and Gingrich cracked “cheerful.”

Later, Twitter commenter Mustafa Marghadi noted: “None said presidential. Maybe they know something.”