Euro-bashers - Get It Right.

Like most people, I spent a large part of last weekend watching the Olympics. (Yay - good job London.) While it was fairly momentous that Presidential wannabee Mitt Romney announced a running mate, (Paul Ryan), I only caught the odd moment here and there of the various chest-thumpings.
What I did hear pee'd me off somewhat, and has been doing so for quite a while.
Euro-bashing.
Ever since he threw his hat into the Presidential ring in 2008, and declared a need for accessible health care for all, Obama has been called a Socialist, a Communist and/or a Marxist. As is obvious, by the inter-changeability of these labels, most of the name-callers can't tell one from the other, it's just used as a general anti-American slur, - always linked to Europe. And not in a good way.
Romney has long campaigned on the anti-Europe stump, having said last year that Obama takes his "political inspiration from Europe". Oooh, hiss boo. Adding "Europe isn't working in Europe". This past weekend his main message was that if we vote for Obama in November we'll "end up like Europe", and again, not in a good way. (Wouldn't you think, after the gaffes he made on his TransAtlantic visit recently, he'd try to avoid looking even more of an idiot in the eyes of our global peers?)
Err, excuse me? Can you imagine if Cameron, Hollande or Merkel had campaigned by pointing west over the Pond, and issuing dire warnings of "turning out like those Yanks?". French Fries would have to be re-named "Freedom Fries" all over again, although I'm fairly sure the beloved hamburger wouldn't be boycotted. (And by the way, last I knew, Cameron wasn't a Socialist.)
Interestingly, if you talk to any "real" Socialists over here, they laugh at the mere suggestion that Obama is one of them. According to Greg Pason, of the USA's Socialist Party, Obama's "Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act", (aka Obamacare) is "anything but Socialist."
So come on Romney and all you uninformed name-callers, if you're going to hurl insults, just get it right.
Or left.