Cantor in the Crosshairs

President Obama promised many things. But more than anything, he promised to fundamentally change the way Washington does business. Gone, he told us, would be the cynical attack politics of the past. Instead, we were promised that Washington — owned lock, stock and barrel by Democrats — would be a city filled with a new spirit of bipartisan cooperation.

As we were reminded today in Kimberly Strassel’s indispensable Potomac Watch, Obama and the Democrats have not only continued playing the “Gotcha Game,” they’ve turned up the heat.

Public Enemy No. 1 in what Strassel termed a “political assassination” — House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Twenty months before the congressional midterm elections, Cantor has been the subject of negative ads from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and a group called Americans United for Change (there’s that word again).

He’s been compared to the original James Bond villain, Dr. No, attacked by Obama strategist David Plouffe and called out by the president himself, who said, “I’m going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Some day, sooner or later, he’s going to say ‘Boy, Obama had a good idea.’ “

Indeed, Cantor has. Aside from reaching out to the administration and presenting new ideas — prompting Obama to say while he wanted ideas, he didn’t want those ideas — Cantor enthusiastically praised Obama’s small-business ideas, encouraging the president to go even further.

His thanks for seeking to work with President Obama on issues where they agree? His wife, Diana, is now the subject of an insidious robo-call campaign.

Obama is smart. He knows what Cantor, along with Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), both former House staffers, represent. They are young, aggressive and unified. They are willing to raise the money and recruit the candidates necessary to win. And, as Strassel notes, “they are on the rise.”

That’s why Obama and his lieutenants have taken a page from “Rushmore’s” Herman Blume to “get them in the crosshairs and take them down.”

It’s smart politics. But it’s also the same old politics of the past. And it sure ain’t change.