“No other president has ever done this,” insisted a calm but obviously smoldering Frank VanderSloot, who spoke quickly to make certain that his words had the desired impact on The O’Reilly Factor audience. The CEO of Melaleuca, a wellness supplement company, VanderSloot and the company have been composited into a target poster reeled out just enough to be riddled with cheap, hollow-point shots from the leftist blogosphere and an Obama campaign website.

The assault on VanderSloot’s good name and business gave but a shard of a view to the type of rancorous and vile campaign that lies ahead. He’s an early target of a determined, bitter drive orchestrated by malevolent yahoos to utterly destroy anyone who gives large sums to Mitt Romney’s campaign or his PACs.

KeepingGOPHonest.com is so loaded with woefully exaggerated and spurious propaganda, it’s enough to make Joseph Goebbels red-faced and irate with envy. It offers a cornucopia of “What Romney Said in His Own Words” videos, many taken so far out of context as to make Mitt look like an extraterrestrial, to which some pathetic attempt at a rebuttal is offered. It’s also loaded with out-of-touch-with-reality hogwash that desperately gropes to find anything even suggestive of good in the Obama record. The resulting “facts” are long on exaggeration and pitiably short on veracity.

But, as VanderSloot quickly discovered, those posting information on it comprise a “political terrorist group,” as Bill O’Reilly correctly describes it, going by the name “Obama for America,” which, given his performance and apologist foreign policy to date, is hilariously oxymoronic.

In VanderSloot’s case, a million dollar contribution to Romney’s PAC, “Restore Our Future,” was what put him in the crosshairs. About him, KeepingGOPHonest.com libelously spewed: “Frank Vandersloot (sic):Frank Vandersloot (sic) is the national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to “Restore Our Future” (a Romney PAC). He is also a “litigious, combative, and  a bitter foe of the gay rights movement” who ‘spent big’ on ads in an ‘ultimately unsuccessful effort to force Idaho Public Television to cancel a program that showed gays and lesbians in a favorable light to school children.’”

From there, the far-left blogosphere took over and added layers to the vitriolic onion, making all manner of injurious and duplicitous claims about him, his wealth (allegedly a billionaire, which is highly arguable), being a card-carrying far-right Republican, and a Mother Jones kill-shot diatribe that accused him of, among other things, running a “pyramid-like” company along the lines of Amway.

In response to the malicious misinformation, the knee-jerk reaction crowd, not bothering to check the facts in our current “shoot-aim-ready” political milieu, triggered a cascade of telephone calls from people cancelling orders placed with the company.

Thus appeared a very tangible sign of David Axelrod’s upcoming character-assassination, go-for-the-jugular strategy, well programmed into his team’s penurious minds so they live by the maxim: “Do unto others who give to Romney the worst thing you can think of doing to anyone doing unto you.”

Indeed, Obama’s campaign must resort to the most avaricious and spiteful of tactics. He has precious little to run on but feeble attempts to promise yet another shot at hope and change. What he doesn’t understand is that those hoping for change are hoping to change who sits in the Oval Office.

Things are not going at all well for the man in that office now, which necessitates the rash attempts to destroy anyone who gives Romney large sums. Nothing better exemplifies the adage, “Desperate men do desperate things,” and what’s being done is serious because not only does his intelligence-dehydrated team try to destroy the person, it goes after his family and his business. It will punish anyone giving Romney and any of his PACs contributions in excess of $1.00.

Why? Various reports scattered throughout the Internet indicate that Obama is but a few million dollars ahead of Romney in his fund-raising efforts. Nothing even approximating the prodigious billion-dollar war chest he so arrogantly promised has manifested.

Fortunately, VanderSloot is made of tougher stuff. Instead of cowering in intimidation, he took the bull by the horns and fought back with various people and organizations jumping to his well-deserved defense. He even taunted the terrorists by donating another $100,000 to the PAC.

The first thing on his response agenda was to hold a conference call with his clients during which he explained his real political positions, his favorable opinion of gays and somewhat successfully capsized of the outright lies so maliciously penned about him. He also quickly set up a website, FrankVanderSlootResponse.com, on which he counters:

1.     On being a billionaire, “I fear my financial status has been greatly exaggerated. I do own a majority interest in Melaleuca, a company we started 26 years ago. The company has done well. Some analysts have suggested that I could sell my share of the company for a lot of money. It’s hard to know how much. The problem is I would have to sell the company before I would ever see the cash [because it’s privately owned (i.e. not on the stock market), it’s difficult to assess its true worth]. I’m not selling, so I will never be cash-rich. But that was never the intent.”

2.     About his political preferences, “I don’t consider myself either a Republican or Democrat. I’m quite conservative on most social and economic issues. And I’m pretty liberal on most environmental issues.”

3.     As to the company he founded, “Contrary to those who do not know us, our business model is nothing like Amway or Herbalife. I challenge anyone to find any similarity whatsoever. There is no investment of any kind unless you want to call a $29 membership fee an ‘investment.’ And anyone can get a refund on that by just asking.”

4.     To clarify his view of gays, “Our company has thousands of gay customers, independent marketing executives, and employees. I believe they feel welcome and valued. I believe that people deserve freedom, respect, and privacy in their own lives. I believe that gay people should have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual.”

Surprisingly, when Roger Plothow, the publisher of the Idaho Falls Post-Register,  a newspaper with which VanderSloot has locked horns many times in the past, learned of the vicious attacks on his nemesis, instead of taking advantage of VanderSloot’s dilemma, editorialized, “Frank and I have gone the rounds in the past and may do so again in the future. One of the things I’ve learned from that is that he’s not the ogre some have made him out to be. I disagree with his politics nearly 100 percent. But, unlike others with whom the Post Register has had run-ins, he’s been willing to listen, engage, and even sometimes change his mind. He’s also sometimes stuck to positions that I continue to believe were wrong. I don’t know anyone about whom the same couldn’t be said.”

And a defense was mounted by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, who pointed out how underhanded the tactics employed by “KeepingGOPHonest.com” really are: “Liberal bloggers and media have since dug into his past, dredging up long-ago Idaho controversies that touched on gay issues. His detractors have spiraled these into accusations that Mr. VanderSloot is a ‘gay bashing thug.’ He’s become a national political focus of attention, aided by the likes of partisan “Salon” blogger Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Bloggers have harassed his children, visiting their social media accounts and asking for interviews and information.

“… President Obama, in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, gave a national address calling for ‘civility’ in politics. Yet rather than condemn those demeaning his opponent’s donors, Mr. Obama—the nation’s most powerful man—instead publicly named individuals, egging on the attacks. What has followed is the slimy trolling into a citizen’s private life.

“If details about Mr. VanderSloot’s life become public, and if this hurts his business or those who work for him, Mr. Obama will bear responsibility. This is what happens when the president makes a list.”

While VanderSloot initially lost 100 emotional  and ignorant clients, his response eclipsed that number in more new clients. The same happened to Rush Limbaugh after his being pilloried in a vivid example of the mainstream media’s ghastly double standard when it come to those of us on the right. Thus, perhaps your business will improve if you donate large sums to Romney. Short-term pain leads to long-term gain, and the apparent backfiring of Obama’s scorched earth campaign.