If you want a microcosm of the leftist playbook, look no further than Michelle Obama’s comments regarding Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue’s new rules on school lunches.

“This is where you really have to look at motives,” Michelle Obama lectured, before asking incredulously, “You really have to stop and think — why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you?”

She wasn’t done, either. “Take me out of the equation — like me or don’t like me,” Obama added. “But think about why someone is okay with your kids eating crap. Why would you celebrate that? Why would you sit idly and be okay with that? Because here’s the secret: If someone is doing that, they don’t care about your kid.”

Yes, Michelle Obama is saying that anyone who didn’t agree to double down on her school lunches didn’t want our kids to have proper nutrition. Baloney.

For most of her husband’s presidency, America’s schoolchildren were the guinea pigs involving their school lunches. That experiment, as shown by photos from students themselves, was an utter failure by any common sense measure. The kids didn’t eat the food. Food that is thrown out doesn’t provide kids with nutrition (though we suppose it’s one way for them to lose weight). It therefore follows that anyone with a modicum of common sense would at a bare minimum support adjusting the guidelines so that kids will eat the school lunches.

So have leftists put our kids before politics? No, they haven’t and never will. As has been the case since the House of Representatives first voted on welfare reform under the Contract with America in 1995, rather than work to address obvious shortcomings in one of their social programs, leftists double down by slandering those who don’t agree with their failed efforts.

Back then, Democrat Rep. John Lewis compared those who wanted to fix a broken system to Nazis — a very vitriolic and slanderous way (not to mention tiresomely unoriginal) of admitting he had no defense for the failed approach of the past, no solutions of his own, and no desire to fix the problem. Today, it’s Michelle Obama claiming that those who don’t double down on her failed school lunch crusade are “okay with your kids eating crap.” No, that’s crap, and we can just ask some experts who lived with her failed program.

“Members of [School Nutrition Association] have advocated for flexibility to address overly prescriptive regulations that have resulted in unintended consequences, including reduced student lunch participation, higher costs and food waste,” an SNA statement said. That’s the organization representing those who work in school cafeterias, by the way. Were they in this conspiracy to deny kids good food at school, too, Mrs. Obama? We don’t think she intended to create school lunches that were so awful that kids decided to throw away their food. But it happened. Rather than try to fix the problem, Michelle chose to further poison the political discourse in this country.