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It’s April.  That seven months away from Election Day.  It’s April.

Nevertheless, the sitting President of the United States has already tipped his hand and proven exactly what conservatives have been predicting for the last three years: he’s got nothing to run on, and so the mud pits are prepped and ready.  After four years in office, Barack Obama will not be campaigning on the hope he promised and the change he delivered.  Instead, he will be telling you why you shouldn’t vote for Mitt Romney.  Don’t lose sight of how profound that is.

The topic came up on a recent edition of The O’Reilly Factor when the host interviewed Charles Krauthammer about some of the desperate statements being made by Obama surrogates – specifically one who suggested that Mitt doesn’t want black people to vote.  For my money, Krauthammer was as sharp in this interview as I’ve ever seen him and it made me wonder why the Romney campaign isn’t hiring him as a strategist.

You can watch the full interview here, but suffice it to say that Krauthammer perfectly encapsulated what the Obama campaign will be talking about for the next seven months: race, class, ethnicity and gender.  Notice what is missing from that list is anything he accomplished in four years as president, half of that time spent with control over both houses of Congress.  Here was the key part of the interview:

"Negative campaigns can work, and we're getting a taste of it right now. I think Romney's strategy should be to embrace that negativity. Just go for it and point out -- go back to it and point out how it's a sign of scurrilousness and hypocrisy," Krauthammer said on FOX News' "O'Reilly Factor."

"Look at the mean that Democrats have put out from top to bottom. Republicans, Romney, the war on women, a concocted idea. War on immigrants, we hear from that one. War on blacks. And It's also class warfare, the war on the middle class. You know, comforting the rich and making sure they don't pay their fair share," Charles Krauthammer said tonight.

Krauthammer then accused Obama of running "the most divisive campaign"on race, ethnicity, class and on gender. "It's going to be the dirtiest campaign you've ever seen," he said tonight.

"The hypocrisy here, of course, is that Barack Obama shot to national consciousness by giving a speech in which he said he would unite red America and blue America. We're not black America, white America, we're the United States of America. He's running -- the Democrats are running the most divisive campaign on race, on ethnicity, on class and on gender. I mean, it's going to be the dirtiest campaign you've ever seen," Dr. Krauthammer said.

"I would say: Hide the children and check the plumbing because you're going to have to shower several times a day," Krauthammer predicted.

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Krauthammer’s suggestion to Romney that he embrace the negativity of Obama was brilliant.  Accept it, respond to it, but then – and this is the key that every conservative should commit to memory and break out almost on a daily basis when confronting the Obama machine – ask the question, “Why is the president talking about these things and not mentioning all the great reasons to vote for him?  Why is he focusing on dividing people and focusing on negativity?  Isn’t there anything positive he has done in the last four years that he can point to?”  It’s a great strategy – one that doesn’t let the idiocy of statements like “Romney doesn’t want black people (or Hispanic people or women) to vote” go by without being exposed for the desperation they entail, but at the same time, brings the conversation back to where it belongs.  Namely, the epic failure of the last four years.

You can tell that Obama does have a bit of a swagger back.  You can see it when he hops off of Marine One and when he approaches a crowd.  That shouldn’t be surprising.  He is a community agitator by trade.  He knows how to inflame passions and generate negativity towards an opponent.  It’s how he cut his teeth, and it’s what he’s good at.  The leadership thing, not so much.  But agitating a community (or in this case a country) is Alinsky 101.  He’s found his enemy in Romney, and he now begins the methodology of isolating it, freezing it, demonizing it. 

But this time there’s a millstone around his neck, and that’s his record.  The job for Romney, and all those who are ready to move the country forward, is to remind Americans that’s what matters.  Check out the Krauthammer interview and commit the strategy to memory.