The invented "Barack X" is easier to run against.

With an increasingly ill-informed electorate inundated with the GOP's dogma, the party plans to combine that ignorance with super PAC funds and a strategic attack on voter-registration laws. Disenfranchisement, by consent of the governed, is the intended pathway. No trick is too dirty, and playing on old stereotypes (using race and religion as fodder) is the preferred tactic.

GOP claims that Obama is all about raising taxes are belied by his recent signing of yet another extension of the payroll-tax cut.

Gingrich's "greatest food stamp president" attack has been sufficiently disproven: Department of Agriculture data show that that title belongs to George W. Bush.

Romney's incessant attacks on Obama's handling of the economy are undermined by nearly two years of recovery. The much-touted lie that Obama is "destroying American jobs" has been answered with 3.7 million new jobs added in 23 months of net job growth.

Gingrich claimed that the president is "dangerous on foreign policy," but facts tell a story of achievement, culminating in the execution of public enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden, and a skillfully orchestrated coalition to defeat Egypt's Mubarak and Libya's Qaddafi.

Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq and has announced an early exit from Afghanistan.

The farcical antics of comedy have met the body politic, and the Republican strategy can be summed up in the Seinfeld phrase: "It's not a lie if you believe it."

No, Barack Obama is not perfect. But his record can be challenged without him being undermined.

As president, he was presented with incredible challenges, and he answered with complicated, largely effective solutions. Obama is not a radical. And you don't need to travel to Kenya or a Gingrich-established moon colony to understand him.

The Obama-Biden re-election campaign recently launched a "truth team" in order to challenge right-wing claims. With so much work to be done, my hope is that American voters will look at the president's real record and arrive at the polls with proper identification.

Edward Wyckoff Williams is an author, columnist, political analyst for MSNBC and a former investment banker. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

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