President Barack Obama today signaled an aggressive tact for his early re-election campaign, critiquing his Republican opponents by name and insisting he's ready to "fight with every fiber of my being" for a second term. 
 
 "How much do you want it?" ABC News' Diane Sawyer asked Obama during an exclusive interview in Las Vegas. 
 
 "Badly," the president said, "because I think the country needs it." 
 
 "Whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be a standard bearer for a vision of the country that I don't think reflects who we are," Obama said. 
 
 "I'm going to fight as hard as I can with every fiber of my being to make sure that we continue on a path that I think will restore the American dream," he said. 
 
 Obama pushed back against what he called Republicans' "rhetorical flourishes," including Newt Gingrich's oft-repeated contention that Obama is the "food stamp president." 
 
 "First of all, I don't put people on food stamps," Obama said. "People become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. No. 3, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government." 
 
 "The larger point is this: that there's going to be a debate over the next eight, nine, 10 months about how to move the country forward," he said. "They've got an argument. They will make it forcefully. I think it's an argument that is wrong." 
 
 Asked whether he believes there's an undercurrent of racial tension in the "food stamp president" criticism, Obama wouldn't say. But he said the rhetoric from conservatives like that used by Gingrich illustrates an attempt by Republicans to engage in the same divisiveness that they profess to decry. 
 
 "The American people are going to make a judgment about who's trying to bring the country together and who's dividing it, who reflects the core values that helped create this country … and who is tapping into some of our worst instincts," he said. 
 
 MORE: Obama tells Sawyer he second-guesses himself constantly 
 
 Obama also used his first network interview since his State of the Union Address to single out three of his Republican rivals, jabbing Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as adherents of a failed political philosophy. 
 
 "We've got a test of Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Santorum's theories. We tried it for 10 years. And it resulted in a huge crash that lost us the most jobs since the 1930s," Obama said of a push for less financial regulation and lower taxes. "And why we would want to adopt something that we just tried and did not work, doesn't make sense." 
 
 Obama said the alternative he's offering – higher taxes on the wealthy, particularly millionaires and billionaires, to bankroll new government spending -- is a "a recipe for a fair, sound approach to deficit reduction and rebuilding this country," which he outlined in his speech to Congress and the nation Tuesday night. 
 
 "I think whether it's Romney or Gingrich or Santorum or any of these folks, the question to ask them is we now have the lowest tax rates in 50 years. We've seen the highest increase in income for the very top echelons since the 1920s. And if, in fact, we're going to reduce our deficit while still investing in those things that we know make America grow, somebody's got to pay for it," he said. 
 
 "I think better I pay for it or Mr. Romney pay for it or Mr. Gingrich help pay for it than a senior citizen suddenly seeing several thousands of dollars in additional Medicare increases or a student who's trying to struggle their way through school," he added. 
 
 MORE: Obama on what really happened in encounter with Gov. Brewer 
 
 First Family Readies for Campaign 
 
 While the White House has said the president will not fully engage in his re-election campaign until Republicans pick a nominee, Obama said his family is fully prepared for the quickly escalating fight expected on the trail in the days ahead. 
 
 "Michelle is very enthusiastic about campaigning for the next nine months," Obama said. " And that hasn't always been the case. I mean, this puts a strain on families. But I think she feels very strongly that we're moving the country in the right direction. I'll let her speak for herself ... but what she's told me is, "We should finish the job.'" 
 
 "And the girls?" Sawyer asked of the Obamas' daughters, Sasha, 10, and Malia, 13. 
 
 "Fortunately, they don't spend too much time worrying about their daddy's job. They've their own stuff to worry about, including doing their homework, cleaning their room and, the state of their sports teams," he said. 
 
 Watchful Eye on Iran 
 
 Obama said he's keeping a watchful eye on tension between Israel and Iran over the country's alleged clandestine nuclear program, but would not say whether the United States believes the Israelis are preparing a military strike. 
 
 "I can't discuss classified military information, certainly not information that's shared between countries," Obama said. 
 
 "But you cannot pursue a nuclear weapon. We've imposed the toughest sanctions ever. They had a lot of bite. The Iranian regime is feeling them. And, ultimately, I hope that we can resolve this through diplomatic means. But we're not taking any options off the table." 
 
 MORE: Is Obama rooting for the Patriots, or Giants? 
 
 MORE: Obama says SEALs rescue made him reflect on daughters ||||| Well, Newt Gingrich seems to have wandered by the garbage can to pick up Barbour's draft playbook, and it's all unfolding as planned. He's getting hit for calling President Obama "the food stamp president" ; even David Gregory heard the racial imagery in the term, given the way Republicans have long loved to associate welfare programs with black people. Ronald Reagan famously railed against Cadillac-driving "welfare queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying "T-bone steaks" with food stamps; Barbour actually praised Head Start, because some of the kids in it "would be better off sitting up on a piano bench at a whorehouse than where they are now." I called Gingrich's remarks "coded racism" yesterday, and today right-wingers were up in arms, pointing out that most food stamp recipients are white. This is absolutely true of most welfare programs, which is why the GOP association of welfare with black people has always seemed, well, racist. 
 
 It's beginning to look like when Haley Barbour shuffled off into the Mississippi sunset, saying he just couldn't commit to a 10-year presidential crusade, he left his draft campaign playbook sitting on a garbage can, and Newt Gingrich picked it up. Barbour, you'll recall, was trying out a new approach to race in the Obama era: Jim Crow wasn't "that bad," the white-supremacist White Citizens Councils kept down the KKK, and nobody could make him denounce an effort by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to dedicate a license plate to KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, either. "I don't go around denouncing people," declared the man who denounced Democrat Ronnie Musgrove for efforts to remove the Confederate flag from Mississippi's state flag. I said at the time that Barbour was trying out the notion that post-Obama, people -- particularly white people leaning Republican -- are ready for an approach that says let's quit all this whining about racism, it wasn't that bad, it's time to get back to the business of cutting taxes for the rich and programs for the poor. 
 
 But let me be clear: I might not have paid attention to Gingrich's "food stamp president" jibe had it not come along with a panorama of images designed to make clear Barack Obama is blackity black black. Praising right-wing Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Gingrich said he'll make the U.S. more like Texas, while Obama only "knows how to get the whole country to resemble Detroit." In the speech to Georgia Republicans where he tried out the "food stamp president" slur, Gingrich also told the bastion of the old Confederacy that 2012 would be the biggest election since 1860 -- you know, when Abraham Lincoln got elected and the South began to secede over slavery, commencing the Civil War. He also suggested the U.S. might need to bring back some kind of voting test, banned under the Voting Rights Act. Last year, of course, Gingrich denounced Obama's "Kenyan anti-colonialist behavior," which made him "outside our comprehension" as Americans, spreading the lie that Obama inherited angry African anti-colonialism from his absent African father, though he was raised by his white mother and grandparents. Oh, and he headed the drive to label Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor "racist" when she was nominated in 2009. 
 
 So let's review: Welfare slur? Check. Tie to a troubled, mainly black city? Check. Specious association with African anti-colonialism? Check. Dire reference to Lincoln and the start of the Civil War, while campaigning deep in the heart of Dixie? Check. Suggestion we need a voter test? Check. Oh, and for good measure, calling liberals concerned about racial injustice "racist"? Check. Awesome: They've hit pretty much every way the GOP has used to divide Americans by race in the last 200 years! 
 
 Great job, Newt. You've developed the perfect platform to run a spirited GOP campaign that attracts a cadre of aggrieved white people. You'll never be president of the United States, but you'll be the champion of the declining share of the country that still thrills to what we used to call dog-whistle politics: coded varieties of racism only understood by their intended audience. And all the efforts by Gingrich defenders to claim I'm the racist are just funny. One of Andrew Breitbart's minions is leading the charge, and he lamented Monday morning on Twitter: "Would prefer to hammer Newt today over throwing Ryan under the bus, but @joanwalsh, @davidgregory, & @ebertchicago had to go & do this." (Roger Ebert was kind enough to Tweet my Sunday Gingrich story.) 
 
 I'd advise the Breitbart gang to get back to hammering Gingrich over Paul Ryan's politically suicidal budget plan; they should focus on the shard of people who want to debate whether Gingrich or Ryan is the leader who can lead their party off a cliff. Anyway, they've mistaken me for someone who cares what they have to say. Gingrich is doubling down on racial politics, and I'm going to continue to call it out when I see it. 
 
 Oh, and this is one in an occasional series of pieces on folks who will never be president, which began when Sarah Palin unraveled over the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. I didn't get to Barbour or Mike Huckabee; they realized they would never be president all on their own. It seems silly to write the same piece on Donald Trump; it's like saying "pigs will never fly." But I'm sure there will be a few more to come.
– Barack Obama appears to be shifting into campaign mode. In an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News last night, the president wasn't afraid to call out his would-be challengers by name, saying, "We've got a test of Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Santorum's theories. We tried it for 10 years. It resulted in a huge crash." He also directly took on Newt Gingrich's assertion that he is a "food stamp president." "I don't put people on food stamps. People become eligible for food stamps," he said, pointing out that eligibility was expanded under George W. Bush, and that "when you have a disastrous economic crash … more people are going to need more support." Asked how much he wanted another term, he replied, "Badly. Because I think the country needs it." He also brushed off his "tense" tarmac showdown with Jan Brewer. "I'm usually accused of not being intense enough, right?" he said. "I think it's always good publicity for a Republican if they're in an argument with me. But this was really not a big deal. I think this is a classic example of things getting blown out of proportion."