When candidate Barack Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, he had some strong words for his Republican opponents.

"[I]f you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters," he proclaimed, "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."

As we wrote in our editorial Sunday, four years later, it reads like a prophetic description of his re-election campaign.

During that speech, Obama also denounced Republicans who paint Democratic ideas as a "Trojan Horse" for "higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values."

Earlier this month, Obama called Paul Ryan's budget a "Trojan Horse," to push "a radical vision" and "thinly veiled social Darwinism" for the United States.